That’s not actually true. The entire threat model rests on a single, unproven axiom: that time is continuous and infinitesimally divisible at the physical level.
If time is instead quantized and discrete, the mathematical formalism collapses at its foundation. You cannot take derivatives over indivisible time. Continuous Schrödinger evolution ceases to be fundamental, and the meanings of superposition, decoherence, and coherence structurally change. Superposition becomes potential between ticks (blocks), not a persistent computational substrate; decoherence becomes an intrinsic consequence of the tick (block) itself, not a gradual dynamical process. Bitcoin literally shows us this already.
Bitcoin forces this axiom into the open. Its ethos is don’t trust, verify, and Bitcoin gives us something physics cannot: a physically instantiated state machine where time is constructed, not assumed. You cannot subdivide a block temporally without destroying causality, finality, determinism, and non-contradiction. Bitcoin simply does not function under continuous time. If discrete time were not fundamental, Bitcoin would be impossible, yet it runs, globally, verifiably, every day, every ~10 minutes a new block of time is constructed.
Gödelian limits already explain why this axiom cannot be settled by measuring Planck time from within the system. Physics cannot falsify its own temporal assumptions internally. Bitcoin sidesteps that limitation by building time as an object. If continuous time were truly fundamental, this system would not work. The fact that it does is the empirical challenge to any model of physics that assumes continuous time (all of it).
Don’t trust, verify.
If time is instead quantized and discrete, the mathematical formalism collapses at its foundation. You cannot take derivatives over indivisible time. Continuous Schrödinger evolution ceases to be fundamental, and the meanings of superposition, decoherence, and coherence structurally change. Superposition becomes potential between ticks (blocks), not a persistent computational substrate; decoherence becomes an intrinsic consequence of the tick (block) itself, not a gradual dynamical process. Bitcoin literally shows us this already.
Bitcoin forces this axiom into the open. Its ethos is don’t trust, verify, and Bitcoin gives us something physics cannot: a physically instantiated state machine where time is constructed, not assumed. You cannot subdivide a block temporally without destroying causality, finality, determinism, and non-contradiction. Bitcoin simply does not function under continuous time. If discrete time were not fundamental, Bitcoin would be impossible, yet it runs, globally, verifiably, every day, every ~10 minutes a new block of time is constructed.
Gödelian limits already explain why this axiom cannot be settled by measuring Planck time from within the system. Physics cannot falsify its own temporal assumptions internally. Bitcoin sidesteps that limitation by building time as an object. If continuous time were truly fundamental, this system would not work. The fact that it does is the empirical challenge to any model of physics that assumes continuous time (all of it).
Don’t trust, verify.