Lift

Success rests on the scaffolding of failures.

Where Does Bitcoin Get Its Sense of Time? Bitcoin doesn’t ask what time it is.
It declares what time it is, one block at a time. Unlike every system before it, Bitcoin doesn’t rely on a central authority for timekeeping. There is no master clock, no GPS signal, no atomic standard. Instead, Bitcoin constructs a decentralized sense of time, stitched together from the input of thousands of independent nodes and miners, each proposing, validating, and enforcing time according to shared rules. Every block contains a timestamp. But that timestamp isn’t handed down by a trusted source. It is suggested by the miner who found the block and accepted only if it falls within strict consensus bounds: - No earlier than the median of the past 11 blocks - No more than 2 hours ahead of the node’s local system time These rules produce a bounded, probabilistic rhythm. It is not perfectly precise, but it is incorruptible. The network doesn’t need atomic synchronization. It only needs agreement on sequence. What matters most isn’t what time it is, but what happened first. That ordering is what makes Bitcoin work. It prevents double-spending. It establishes finality. It defines ownership.
And it does so without trusting anyone, not even for time. So while Bitcoin may drift behind atomic time by an hour or two, what it builds is more valuable than precision:
A neutral, tamper-proof timeline, secured by energy and immune to manipulation. Time in Bitcoin isn’t measured. It’s mined.