BITCOIN IS TIME, TIME IS MONEY
This concept was explored by @Gigi and @Saifedean Ammous in episode 73 of the bitcoin standard podcast at the 35 minute mark that I want to share with you all.
Bitcoin solves a problem that existed long before digital money: there is no objective, shared notion of time in a decentralized system. In physics, there is no universal “now.” Because information travels at finite speed, simultaneity does not exist. Even on Earth, clocks cannot be perfectly synchronized. Time is always local, relative, and approximate. When this reality is carried into distributed computer networks, it becomes a fundamental limitation: without shared time, systems struggle to agree on the order of events.
Any attempt to use timestamps in a decentralized network fails for this reason. Clocks drift, network latency is unpredictable, and timestamps can be falsified. There is no way to objectively verify when something happened without trusting a clock. But ordering is everything in money. If a system cannot reliably determine which transaction came first, it cannot prevent double-spending.
This is why every digital money system before Bitcoin relied on trusted intermediaries. They did not fail because of weak cryptography; they failed because they depended on trusted time.
Bitcoin’s breakthrough was to abandon the idea of agreeing on time altogether. Instead of asking when an event happened, Bitcoin asks in what order it happened. This shift reframes the problem in a way that makes decentralization possible. Ordering does not require synchronized clocks, only a shared rule for determining sequence.
Bitcoin introduces its own internal notion of time based on block height. One block follows another, forming an irreversible sequence. This sequence is the timechain. Each block is a discrete tick of Bitcoin time, and the only thing that matters is that the order is universally agreed upon. Time in Bitcoin is not measured in seconds, but in accumulated blocks.
This ordering is enforced by proof-of-work. You can lie about timestamps, but you cannot lie about accumulated work. To alter the order of events, you must redo the work in the present, consuming real energy. Bitcoin’s history is therefore anchored in physics rather than trust. The past is not declared; it is earned.
The ten-minute block interval is not a traditional clock. It is a feedback mechanism. Difficulty adjusts so that Bitcoin time progresses at a roughly human pace, but this link is statistical rather than precise. Bitcoin does not depend on real-world clocks to function. Real-world time loosely maps onto Bitcoin’s internal rhythm, not the other way around.
By doing this, Bitcoin achieves something no system had achieved before. It allows a global, decentralized network to agree on a shared history without synchronized clocks and without central authority. It creates a decentralized clock — a way to establish objective order in a relativistic universe.
Seen through this lens, Bitcoin is not merely digital money or digital scarcity. Money represents stored labor, deferred consumption, and a claim on future energy — in other words, money is time. Bitcoin is the first monetary system that measures and protects time without trusting humans, institutions, or political power. It converts energy into order, order into time, and time into money.
Spotify
73. Bitcoin and Time with Gigi
The Bitcoin Standard Podcast · Episode
