Gigi @[email protected]oinhackers.org

11/ I hope you have enjoyed this time-centered view on Bitcoin. The next time someone asks what Bitcoin is, simply answer: "It is time."

10/ By creating a novel definition of time, Satoshi managed to solve an otherwise intractable coordination problem in our relativistic universe: agreeing on the order of things on a global scale.

9/ The difficulty adjustment makes sure that Bitcoin's time and our time stay in sync. It is the probabilistic metronome that orchestrates the intricate dance of the network.

8/ This intricate dance of coordination creates a moment in time that every node can verify for itself. It can trust, with a very high probability, that this is what actually happened in the past.

7/ Bitcoin uses SHA-256 and digital signatures as its causal building blocks and the ever-changing interactions of its peers, as well as the randomness of PoW as its source of entropy.

6/ Bitcoin creates its own sense of time using two essential building blocks: causality and unpredictability. Causal links are settling the past. Unpredictable events are opening the doors to the future. The chain tip is the eternal now.

5/ A decentralized system can't rely on our human concept of time. A trustless, non-local time is required. Trustless, because we must not introduce a third party. Non-local because we don't have the luxury of a central frame of reference.

4/ In the informational realm, only ledgers exist. And to make sure that transactions on a ledger are in order, a concept of time is required. In other words: Tokens are timeless, ledgers are not.

3/ The two basic forms of money are ledgers (made of information) and physical tokens (made of atoms). Physical tokens keep track of themselves. Ledgers need someone who is in charge.

2/ Among other things, money solves a coordination problem. Trading a single good against others solves the combinatorial explosion of a barter economy. It is a scalability solution that allows coordination across large groups of people.

"Do not try and trade the corn. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth."

"What truth?"

"There is no sell."

"There is no sell?"

"Then you'll see, that it is not the market that bends, it is only yourself."

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