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@ Guy Swann
2025-05-15 00:59:19
Less about that also:
The clock (and specifically the bell tower in this case) is less often thought of as a conflict prevention tool, even though it very much is. The ability to tell and broadcast time independently was enormously valuable in preventing disputes over labor and various time based obligations. Especially when the broadcast was “global,” such that any attempt to change it, altered it for everyone, rather than it being manipulable for a specific person or circumstance.
Bitcoin’s breakthrough isn’t about payments. It’s not revolutionary because UTXOs are super special or something. It’s about independent consensus on the *current state of global ownership.* “Current” being a keyword here. No matter where you are in the world, within seconds everyone is aware of and can independently verify, without any ambiguity, the state of ownership of every bitcoin that exists. And it ticks forward in a steady rhythm of updates that are broadcast to the world.
The proof of work chain demarcates an economically defensible PAST. Even though every single item in the ledger is digital and can be edited by anyone. I can edit the genesis block in my computer without the slightest difficulty, yet the world will not accept the change without a staggering (and cumulative) economic cost attached to it. It makes the past horribly costly to change, and increasingly so the further back you go, it makes the present easily verifiable, and creates a global auction for adding entires into future blocks.
Payments are sort of a side effect of how you show and exchange ownership securely, but they aren’t the unique or fascinating element of the system.
Bitcoin’s profound breakthrough is that it established an independently unforgeable sense of past, present, and future in a *digital* record keeping system without any authority at all, that no one on earth can control, but everyone can freely access.