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by arcticbull 1694 days ago
The blockchain is a pretty terrible timestamping service as the block time varies based on the current hash rate and difficulty. From as little as 5.5 minutes to as much as 15 minutes. [1] It's at best a coal-powered monotonic counter. Given the massive variability you have to correlate it with an actual clock you trust lol, and if you trust the clock you may as well just use that.

[1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim...
1 comments
drdeca 1694 days ago
by timestamping I didn't mean in terms of, getting the most precise time possible, but in terms of a very difficult to fake-in-large-ways timestamp.

I have at least slightly more trust in the bitcoin blockchain not having the times be falsified in a major way than I do for any of the centralized timestamping services where you are trusting the security of those companies' timestamping servers.

The reason why I say "slightly more" is because I do have a pretty large amount of trust in those timestamping sources.

Bringing up the coal-powered is irrelevant to my point, which is not about whether it is worth it, but whether it has any uses.

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arcticbull 1694 days ago
> Bringing up the coal-powered is irrelevant to my point, which is not about whether it is worth it, but whether it has any uses.

Indeed, I was being glib. Apologies if it was out of place, was meant more for a smile than relevance.

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