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Time is Bitcoin 

August 3rd, 2018, I did something I had no patterned history of doing outside of the one-off English class assignment in school.  I wrote a poem.  I wound up writing another about a month and a half later.  At the time, I didn’t understand what it was that I was going through.  I still occasionally get the urge to write a poem but it doesn’t happen too often.  The very reason why is within the poem itself, and it’s not because this bird is more of a night owl than a morning lark.  It’s because of the dynamic tension that exists between the supply of time and my demand for time.

R.S.V.P.

7:45 on a Monday morning,

light trickles in from the sun that’s dawning.

Lying in bed. Wanna sleep. Gotta wake.

Alarm’s telling me which path I oughtta take.

Alarm did its job about an hour ago.

Snooze button too, half a dozen times or so.

My circadian rhythm’s always pushin’ for more time:

the highest valued currency that occupies my mind.

Time, at times, seems limitless, and others limiting.

Supply is limited (for now…). Demand? That’s interesting.

What drives each individual to get up every day?

It depends…Well sure, but what did Maslow have to say?

For most it’s the basic needs that roust them from their beds.

For others, motivations are contained in their heads:

transcending our own isolation, ever seeking validation, 

love, accomplishments, achieving self-actualization.

What does it take to reach the top of Maslow’s pyramid?

Old men sitting on mountaintops just smile and nod their head.

No answer is the answer. A blank left on the page.

‘Respondez s’il vous plaît’ speaks the silence of the sage.

It’s not about a destination. It’s the path you choose to take.

Life’s a journey. In the end we are the memories we make.

R.S.V.P. is an initialism which is basically an acronym that isn’t pronounced as a word but instead is articulated by the individual letters that compose it.  ‘Respondez s’il vous plaît’, translated from French into English means “respond if it pleases you”.  The word “if” alone suggests chronological order which suggests the theme of this article: time.

A date will be posted along with this article, along with a time, designating the date and time the article was published.  The opening words of this article were linguistic tools used by English speakers to coordinate a topic as immersive, philosophically significant, far reaching, and interesting as Bitcoin: time.  Likewise, I used a month, day of the month, and numerical year to designate when I wrote the poem above, R.S.V.P.  In the poem, I’m dancing with the multiplicity of manners in which each individual uses their time each day.  What purpose are they pursuing and why?  Thoughts that domino from considering the idea of the supply of time or the demand for time are big thoughts.  These are the types of thoughts philosophers, theologians, economists, physicists, and psychologists all love to consider.

They say “time is money”.  Economic calculus applies to money and time alike.  I only have so much discretionary income and I only have so much discretionary time.  What I can do with that discretionary money or time is somewhat limited in scope due to natural restrictions, but within that set, the possibilities remain seemingly endless.  There are many choices and many people competing for your money and/or your time in the economies of money and attention.  In order to determine what to do with money or time, we engage in economic calculus.  One can’t double spend one’s money or time, so one must select where to deploy it.  Yes, hodling is a form of deployment.

What we choose to do with our time is where the purpose of life slots in.  As Bob Dylan said, “you gotta serve somebody.”  We can choose to serve ourselves.  We can choose to serve others.  We can choose to learn and grow in our appreciation of this universe and this life in which we find ourselves engaged.  We can choose to persist in our ignorance and construct a mental prison for ourselves.  No matter what we choose, we must choose, and as the Knight Templar in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said “Choose wisely”.

110 years as of 12/23/2023

Sometimes, however, we don’t get a choice.  We enter this world and the world has a set of initial conditions that we inherit as we are born.  The Lindy Effect or Lindy’s Law states that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable thing, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to the current age of the thing.  In other words, the longer that a non-perishable thing exists, the longer that non-perishable thing is expected to continue to exist.

What temporal traditions did we inherit that we continue to propagate today?  ‘Tis the season to discuss such things, as we have three winter holidays grouped together on the calendar each year that are all related to time: Christmas, New Years, and Genesis Block Day.  There’s also a winter solstice and the anniversary of the establishment of the Federal Reserve in the same calendrical neighborhood.  A relatively small quorum of senators in Washington, D.C. on December 23rd, 1913, passed the Federal Reserve Act.  The vote was 43-25, which only adds up to 68.  There were 48 states by the time Arizona joined the union in 1912, meaning there should be 96 Senatorial votes.  As many readers may have guessed 28 Senators were already home for Christmas by December 23rd of that year.

Christmas

The story goes that Christ was born on December 25th of the year zero and that’s why we celebrate Christmas every year on December 25th and why we count years starting from the year that Christ was born.  Not many people know when that time keeping convention began or who started it.  It didn’t happen right away.  It took several centuries before anyone would begin counting years starting with 0 as the year of the birth of Christ.  How accurate is a 6th century monk going to be reasonably able to estimate the year that Christ was born?  With modern astronomical models and some clues from the Bible, Dr. Michael Heiser, host of The Naked Bible Podcast, suggests we are now better able to determine when Christ was born.  Heiser suggests that John the Revelator, the author of Revelations, got ahold of this information after the Madji had recorded it for posterity.  The most common rebuttal of this narrative is the date of the death of Herod in 4 B.C. so Jesus being born in 3 B.C. isn’t possible.  Heiser suggests that there is good evidence that Herod, in fact, died in 1 B.C.

In Revelation 12, there are a number of astronomical clues offered that, via precise, astronomical models based in math and physics, may offer us an incredibly accurate sense of when Christ was born.  The very first verse speaks of

a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars”.

Verses 3 and 4 describe

a great red dragon having 7 heads and 10 horns and on his heads 7 crowns.  His tail drew one third of the stars of the sky, and threw them down to the Earth.  The Dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child.

These astronomical clues suggest that the “woman”, Virgo, was positioned in such a way that the Sun would’ve been in conjunction (collinear) with Virgo and the Earth.  It also suggests that the moon would be at Virgo’s feet.  It suggests that there is another constellation present in this convergence, the “dragon”.  Hydra would satisfy the 7 heads detail and is the largest constellation in the sky at over 1300 square degrees.  Scorpio is the 33rd largest constellation and the scorpion’s tail satisfies the “tail drew one third of the stars of the sky” detail.  What is interesting is that both Hydra and Scorpio were right where Revelation 12:4 described.

Using our modern calendar conventions, on September 11th in the year 3 B.C. there was a 90-minute window in which not only were Virgo, the Sun, the Moon, Hydra, and Scorpio all aligned in this way, the constellation known as Leo was also present directly above Virgo’s head.  Leo, the constellation, is a lion.  The Lion of Judah is a Jewish national and cultural symbol, traditionally regarded as the symbol of the tribe of Judah.  The lion is known as the king of the jungle and its magnificent mane is reminiscent of a natural crown of sorts.  Revelation 12:1 says “on her head was a crown of 12 stars”.  It is hard to ignore that Leo the lion, symbolic of the Lion of Judah, one of the 12 tribes of Israel, was positioned just above Virgo’s head in the location one would expect a crown to rest.  It gets better though, because Regulus, the “King Star”, part of Leo, was there and was in conjunction with Jupiter, the “King planet”.  According to the Bible, when Christ was crucified, they posted “INRI” on top of the cross indicating that Christ was the “King of the Jews”.  Lastly, it is worth mentioning that Mary, the mother of Christ, is attributed with having given birth to Christ while still having been a virgin.  Virgo, the constellation, is representative of a virgin maiden.

That’s a lot of astronomical and scriptural synchronicity to write off as coincidence.  For a bit more context, we can look to Luke 2:8 which conveys that “there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”  In the Israel/Palestine area of the world, it gets down into the 50s Fahrenheit (low teens Celsius). That’s not exactly fun overnight camping conditions in late December.

Not only would the shepherds not have been living out in the fields in December, the Madji would not have been travelling at that time for the same reasons.  The action of beginning to travel by foot to wage war on some other group of humans is known as “marching”.  It is no coincidence that this term coincides with the month that marks the very beginning of the break of winter.  The Madji were wisemen.

In ancient Egypt, the serpent hieroglyph was pronounced as an onomatopoeia, like “bark” or “meow” or “moo” or “hiss”.  The Egyptian pronunciation of the serpent hieroglyph was a lot closer to the combination of the letters “D” and “J”, which produces a sound similar to the soft pronunciation of the letter “G”.  Words that had a serpent hieroglyph in them were connected to what was known as “serpent wisdom” in Egypt.  This “serpent wisdom” is what Christ was talking about in the 10th book of Matthew in verse 16 when Christ said “be ye therefore wise as serpents”.  In Greek, ‘wisdom’ is ‘sophia’.  In Greek, ‘serpent’ is ‘ophis’.  Rearrange the ‘s’ in each word and you basically have the other word.  The Greeks and the Egyptians both knew about this “serpent wisdom” of which Christ directed us to embody. 

Madji was one of several terms that indicated “serpent wisdom”.  Madjic was something done by Madji.  Madjic was basically a term for things that normies didn’t comprehend. Widjets were madjic inventions. The term “djinn”, a term that the Islamic world absorbed from Egyptian culture during the Islamic conquest and settlement of Egypt, is the etymological root of the words genie, genius, ingenious, and engineer.  Engineers, of course invent widjets all the time, another ‘dj’ word associated with ‘serpent wisdom’.  Djinn were described as part serpent, part human.  They were further described as spiritual beings capable of superhuman feats which sounds a lot like madjic.  With a description like that, it’s easy to see why Disney drew the genie the way they did in Aladdin. 

You get 3 wishes. No wishing for more wishes. I also can’t violate consensus on the Bitcoin network.

Aladdin isn’t the only movie with connections to the wisdom of the serpent.  The Djedi order was a real thing.  That’s right.  Lucas got the Jedi order from a real sect of priests in Egypt known as the Djedi.  These Djedi warrior monks knew things that normies didn’t and, as a result of this special “gnosis”, this “serpent wisdom”, were capable of extraordinary feats like Jedi mind tricks and more.

I lost my Bitcoin in a boating accident.”

Astrology was a subject the Madji would have known, as astrology, tarot, and Kabbalah all have roots in ancient Egypt.  That explains why they would have been aware of this cosmic coincidence of sun, moon, Jupiter, and multiple constellations.  Back then, there was no line drawn between astrology and astronomy as we have now.  Madji is, like genie, genius, ingenious, engineer, and Jedi, associated with ‘serpent wisdom’.  That all said, anyone bearing the name of Madji is not going to travel in November and December in the year 3 B.C.  It’s dangerous enough as it is dealing with Thugs and other such gangs of road bandits who would overwhelm exposed and vulnerable travelers with disparity of force.  To add overnight winter low temperatures into the mix is not something a wiseman would have risked. 

So then why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th?  At the time of Christ, many people regarded the teachings of Christ to be agreeable with their pre-existing beliefs, and, as such, would practice both the old ways while incorporating new Christian practices.  This would include the celebration of their legacy holidays and Christian holidays alike.  At least as early as the 4th century, the church didn’t like this and attempted to use economic concepts of the scarcity of the supply of time to drive “pagan” Christians into focusing on Christianity.  There are only 24 hours in a day.  By superimposing fiat Christian holidays on top of pre-existing pagan holidays, the church was able to eliminate many pagan practices.  Christmas isn’t the only Christian holiday that was superimposed upon the calendar for this purpose.

Easter is a derivation of Esther.  Easter’s date is dependent upon the Vernal (Spring) Equinox.  Esther was a fertility goddess.  This celebration was all about grass and eggs and rabbits, all symbols of new life and fertility and growth.  This was a celebration intended to bring good fortune for crops and livestock.  Midsummer, formerly known as Litha, was a summer solstice holiday marking the middle of the growing and harvesting seasons.  The Feast Day of St. John the Baptist was superimposed upon Midsummer, which, back then, was June 24th.  All Saints Day was originally on May 13th to coincide with the Roman festival of Lemuria, but in the 8th century, Pope Gregory III moved All Saints Day to, instead, coincide with Samhain, also known as Halloween.  The winter solstice holiday, Saturnalia, was celebrated as a mark of mid-winter.  It’s also very close to the annual point where we count another year as having been completed.  Another name for Saturn is Cronus.  Cronus is just a different spelling of Chronos which means Time.  Saturnalia was an astrologically significant moment in the year to choose for marking the end of one year and the beginning of the next.  That’s exactly what they did.

Chronos

How do we measure time?  There are a number of ways that question could be meant and answered.  How does Christmas affect how we measure time?  Well, this article is being written at the end of the 2,023rd year that has elapsed since, according to tradition at least, the birth of Christ, which we celebrate at Christmas.  The birth of Christ was such a monumental moment in human history that we rearranged how we keep time based upon when Christ was born.

Christian evangelists will tell you why the birth of Christ was an event worthy of reordering the way in which we keep track of time.  Some researchers, seeking to fill the gaps in the early years of the life of Christ that are not covered in the canonical Bible, suggest that Christ travelled with his wealthy relative, Joseph of Arimethea, and, while traveling, learned from the sages of various cultures(including Egypt), uniting their esoteric wisdom traditions into what would be known as Christianity, or, back then, known as “the way”.  If that is true, the idea of calling the period of time after Christ the “Common Era” makes a lot of sense, as Christ travelled around and collected the wisdom traditions from everywhere available into one, unified, common set of teachings that was then made available to everyone.

Regardless of what happened during the “missing years” of Christ’s life, we have modified the way that we keep count of time with what is now likely a false date intended to serve as a placeholder for the real event.  One of the first writers to use this date keeping convention was Dionysius Exiguus.  Dionysius was a monk in 525 A.D..  He was hyper-focused on determining exactly when Easter would occur in the coming years.  The general idea is that the year zero is the year Christ was born and all years after that should be counted forward from there.  That time counting convention would go on to become the global standard, acknowledging that the birth of Christ was indeed a pivotal moment in history.

New Years

Like Christmas and Saturnalia, New Years Day is another holiday that is historically tethered to the winter solstice and has a very clear connection to time.  Like Christmas, New Years Day is likely a derivative of Saturnalia, or the winter solstice.  Saturn is also known as Cronus or Chronos which means ‘time’ in Greek.  It is very appropriate for Saturnalia to be coincidental with an astrological marker, the winter solstice.  Either solstice would serve as a very appropriate point in our annual cycle for designating when a new cycle around the sun begins.  If you think about it, it’s kind of arbitrary, right?  Why not select the break between February and March as when we finish one year and begin the next?  The precedent of when we celebrate a new year was set by the celebration of Chronos anchored to an astrologically observable phenomenon, the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, which is where a lot of these conventions were cultivated.

The names of the months themselves are a rather interesting side note here.  Octagons have 8 sides and an octopus has 8 tentacles but October is not the 8th month.  Heptagons have 7 sides.  The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, also known as the Translation of the Seventy, along with the term ‘heptagon’, etymologically suggests that September ought to be the 7th month rather than the 9th month.  Novena’s are ancient devotions consisting of 9 days of prayer and nonagons have 9 sides so November should probably be the 9th month, not the 11th month.  Decimal, decimate, decimeter, decibel, and decagon all have to do with 10, yet, again, December is the 12th month, not the 10th month on the calendar.

One of the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus, had a calendar with 10 months: Martius(Mars), Aprilis(Aphrodite), Maius(Maia), Iunius(Juno), Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.  There were 30 or 31 days per each month and an unassigned number of days assigned to winter as the conclusion of the annual unit of time.

Plutarch (46 AD – 119 AD), a Greek philosopher, historian, essayist, biographer, and priest in the temple of Apollo, recorded that one traditional explanation for the addition of 2 months was the 2nd king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, who added January and February to the calendar.  Another version Plutarch records is that, originally, January and February were at the end of the year, and Numa Pompilius moved them to the beginning of the year instead of having them be at the end of the year.  This way the month of Janus, who was a peaceful god, would come before the month of Mars, the god of war.

In the James Bond movie Goldeneye, Alec Trevelyan assumed the pseudonym “Janus” after his face was scarred in the explosion at the Soviet chemical weapons facility called Arkangel.

The version of the story Plutarch recorded in which January and February were originally located at the end of the year before Numa Pompilius moved them to the beginning of the year is interesting when considered alongside the Samhain (pronounced “SOW-win”) holiday.  Halloween began as a Celtic tradition called Samhain.  This was a seasonal holiday meant to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the deadly cold of winter. The number of hours of daylight is diminishing rapidly at that time of the year.  The Celts believed that the “veil” between the living and the dead was particularly thin as well, allowing spirits of the dead to visit the living.

When a veil is thin, it is susceptible to penetration by the slightest of forces.  A veil separates two domains.  A penetration of that veil may be reasonably likened to a gate, doorway, passage, or frame.  An observer located at that penetration could look forwards or backwards from that penetration and see the dual realms.  Janus, among other things, was god of gates, doorways, transitions, passages, frames, and duality, lending credibility to the idea that January was originally the 2nd to last month of the year, making Samhain/Halloween the holiday that kicks off that month.

Janus is also the god of beginnings, time, and endings so January makes a lot of sense, symbolically speaking, as the first month of the year.  Janus was always depicted as having two faces looking through the gateway of the present between the dual realms of past and future.  On New Years, we have a tendency to look back upon the year we just completed, reminisce, laugh, cry, and learn.  We also have a tendency to look forward to what the new year will bring and how we may, with this new year, renew and improve ourselves with New Years resolutions.  People look backwards in time.  People look forward in time.  Janus encapsulates this pattern and is a suitable symbol to be attached to the first month of the new year.

Genesis Block Day

A new beginning fittingly took place January 3rd, 2009 when the pseudonymous cypher punk and author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the Genesis Block of the Bitcoin Proof of Work chain.  While it wasn’t the first time that the US dollar has been massively inflated, the quantitative easing measures and bailouts for banks that were occurring at that time were the largest inflationary events that the US dollar had ever faced.  This was a beginning, an end, a gate, a doorway, etc., so for the Genesis Block to occur right away in January was very fitting.

The markets were a bloodbath back in 2007-2009.  Baron Rothschild of the Rothschild family central banking cartel is famous for having once said “buy when there’s blood in the streets.”  That advice would have been well applied to Bitcoin at any point after January 3rd, 2009.  In some respects, it’s fair to call the Genesis Block ‘the block heard round the net’, an homage to the shot heard round the world at Lexington and Concord 234 years before.  Cycles are something that many pundits will highlight, and from a variety of different backgrounds, perspectives, and areas of expertise.  From demographers to astrologers to wealth building gurus and finfluencers of all types, cycles are a common theme.  The Fourth Turning is a pleb favorite too.  Cycles are hard to ignore, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out.

The term ‘lifeblood’ exists for a reason, as does ‘lifetime’, so it’s not too much of a stretch to see blood as a metaphor for time given that blood may also be used to metaphorically represent money.  By that metaphor, the lifeblood of American patriots was drawn in 1913 in the form of the Revenue Act and the Federal Reserve Act.  In 2009, Satoshi showed the world that blood, like Brawndo, does not have what plants crave.  If we stop spilling one another’s blood/time/money, things might go a little smoother.

When we stop stealing one another’s life/energy/time, everyone can build instead of rebuilding constantly while those who steal insulate themselves from consequences with the fruits of their theft.  Satoshi knew this and, accordingly, left us a message in the Genesis Block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”.

The raw hex version of the Genesis Block and the January 3rd, 2009 edition of the London Times

Satoshi was pointing at the blood-letting of the masses by the central banker cartel and the oligarchs in government.  These kleptocrats seem to think that stealing purchasing power from the masses via legal counterfeiting is somehow acceptable.  This is life imitating art.  In this case we’re the four-legged animals on Orwell’s Animal Farm and our money printing kleptocrats walk on two legs acting as though they are somehow above but equal to us.  Two legs is more equal than four legs, apparently, because they get to counterfeit money but we don’t.  Blood-letting doesn’t heal the body, and neither does inflation heal the economy.  Satoshi built something new, a sort of economic cyber-fortification anchored in the laws of mathematics and thermodynamics, outfitted with a consensus mechanism, and backed by the will of the decentralized, global, avant-garde of liberty.

Like the birth of Christ, the establishment of Bitcoin has brought about a new method of keeping time.  I personally have multiple books with autographs of prominent Bitcoiners alongside a block height, indicating when the signature was signed.  The Declaration of Monetary Independence which was available to be signed at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in April in Miami, was dated in two ways: “Signed this 31st day of October, in the year 2021 [Block height 707575]”.  At this point, it is common for people to look backwards through their lives and figure out what the block height was when significant event X, Y, or Z occurred, often things like marriages, births, etc.  The importance of time and the order it brings cannot be understated when it comes to the design of Bitcoin.

In Satoshi’s Bitcoin whitepaper, the word “chain” appears 27 times.  In section 5, step number 6, Satoshi approaches the term ‘blockchain’ with the phrase “…the next block in the chain…”.  Satoshi does that again in section 11 with the phrase “…chain of blocks…”.  In section 8, the caption on the only image says “Longest Proof-of-Work Chain”.  Section 12 bears a similar use of language by Satoshi when he says “…the proof-of-work chain…”.  The word ‘blockchain’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the whitepaper.

The word “time” appears 24 times in the whitepaper.  Half of those come in or before section 3 which is entitled “Timestamp Server”.  In the whitepaper’s introduction, Satoshi states

The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.  The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power.

Satoshi clearly articulates the importance of timestamps as it pertains to the establishment via proof of the sequence of events(transactions) witnessed.  In Satoshi’s rough draft of the Bitcoin source code, Satoshi referred to the chain as a “timechain”.  Hat tip to @DocumentingBitcoin for that fact.  Clearly Satoshi had an inclination to refer to Bitcoin’s chain of proof of work as a timechain.

Screenshot of Satoshi’s rough draft of the Bitcoin source code

Time pervades the entirety of human experience, but one interesting aspect of overlap between Bitcoin and time is the evolutionary aspect.  Evolution is predicated upon time.  In physics, there can be no change in position, velocity, acceleration, momentum, or energy if no change in time has elapsed.  Bitcoin may well fulfill the evolutionary vision Nikola Tesla put forth for humans in his work The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.  On page 183 of that work, Tesla talks of the “ideal development of the war principle” ultimately leading “to the transformation of the whole energy of war into purely potential, explosive energy, like that of an electrical condenser.”  If Tesla was alive today, he would likely see the parallels between his vision, as articulated in this work and a global network of ASICs hashing it out to earn those precious block subsidies and transaction fees.

Tesla goes on to consider “the next phase in this evolution” of human warfare. 

This evolution will bring more and more into prominence a machine or mechanism with the fewest individuals as an element of warfare, and the absolutely unavoidable consequence of this will be the abandonment of large, clumsy, slowly moving, and unmanageable units…The loss of life will become smaller and smaller, and finally, the number of the individuals continuously diminishing, merely machines will meet in a contest without bloodshed, the nations being simply interested ambitious spectators. When this happy condition is realized, peace will be assured.”

In order for peace to come about on Earth some form of a global evolution seems appropriate as an expectation.  If such a development were to occur, the term “evolution” would be a suitable label.  Evolution is an interesting thing to consider, because while we can look backwards in time and observe trends in how single celled organisms, plants, and various animals mutated over many, many generations, we cannot necessarily guess what the next stage of human evolution is.  Some people, if asked, might suggest that the next evolutionary leap for humanity is not a physical one, but rather a spiritual one.  They suggest that the next step is to experience a spiritual awakening of sorts.  Gopi Krishna,(30 May 1903 – 31 July 1984), a man regarded as a yogi, mystic, teacher, social reformer, and writer,  considered the serpent wisdom possessed by the Madji and spoken of by Christ in Matthew 16 to be the next evolutionary leap for humanity.  Others, like Ray Kurzweil suggest that we will merge with our technology and transcend the biological limitations of our bodies.

Whether the next evolutionary leap made by any individual is spiritual, biohacking, or otherwise, one thing is clear about Bitcoin: there is such thing as a Bitcoin metanoia.  Hat tip to John Vallis for confirming that he refers to this same observed phenomenon as a Bitnoia.  When someone really understands Bitcoin and the laser eyes turn on fully for the first time, a few things happen.  First, the person realizes they need to get as much value as they possibly can into Bitcoin before the next bull cycle pops off.  Second, they realize that, by sacrificing a certain amount of instant gratification now for a few years, they can leverage orders of magnitude more delayed gratification.  In other words, they figure out low time preference.  The third thing they figure out is that, if gratification is delayed for a few years, it would be nice to make up for lost time by tacking on a few more years of life at the end.  In order to achieve that goal, Bitcoiners often pursue the betterment and optimization of their body and mind by modifying their diet, adopting an intelligent exercise routine, and by curating for themselves a higher quality mental diet of news and voluntary studies of interest.  They tend to turn off the mainstream propaganda and tune into other plebs offering signal in a world filled with noise.  By finding good information, eating healthy, and exercising intelligently, we should be able to live longer, fuller lives.

Bitcoin has a tendency to get people in shape physically and mentally.  Very often Bitcoin drives hodlers to, eventually, seek higher order spiritual truths.  This is a very common trend.  Many find or re-find religion or spirituality after falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.  This is well explained by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  As a no-coiner matures in perspective and as time passes, eventually they find themselves sitting on a life changing amount of purchasing power.  This reduces anxieties over basic survival needs and allows the hodler to aim at higher order goals like professional accomplishments, validation, friendship, love, and ultimately, self-actualization.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In 2014, Scarlett Johannsen starred as the protagonist in a movie about a woman, Lucy, who self-actualized due to an unexpected series of events.  In her state of gnosis, Lucy discusses with a group of scientists the importance of time to existence itself.

Film a car speeding down the road.  Speed up the image infinitely and the car disappears, so what proof do we have of its existence.  Time gives legitimacy to its existence.  Time is the only true unit of measure.  It gives proof to the existence of matter.  Without time, we don’t exist.

Miners know.  Without time spent hashing, no Bitcoins would exist and ASICs would be no better than a bunch of fancy bricks.

Tick tock, next block.

Time is Bitcoin.

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1 Comment

  1. RAnger

    Brilliant expose on time, Bitnoia and Kleptocracy.
    Fun read.

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