BTC259: Bitcoin & Theoretical Physics w/ Jeff Booth, Jack & Nick (Bitcoin Podcast)

27:29What if this probability space that we can observe in the mempool, right? You have this probability space that takes energy and converts that energy into information. That direction, that one-way direction creates time and time is emergent from that same thing. That if that were true, would force us to challenge a whole bunch of the concept, the ideas that we were stuck in this other box. Did I kind of, Jack or Nick, would you comment on that? I have some things to add. So Nick and I have talked about this. We want to make it pretty clear that this is not our theory. This is Bitcoin's theory. We're just trying to observe Bitcoin for what it is.

28:14And we believe that Bitcoin is something way more fundamental than probably the average person believes it to be. And so we're trying to map that thing that we're observing onto our reality and seeing if that allows us to unlock something new here. And so we've jumped around a lot. And I really want to hit on the point. It's like beneath this subjective protocol, we're just trying to say that there is an objective physical process underneath it that maps directly onto physics. And like you said, it is the process at which we take a... I would refer to it as we take the non-space and difficulty, we'll quantify that as entropy, and we'll do work to resolve a single valid nonce from this, we'll call it a large space for the average listener.

28:58And in doing that, that creates work. The resolution of a valid nonce from a sea of invalid nonces is work itself. And that work is applied to the block. So it's like you have work generated from the nonce and that work is applied on the block. And so that is kind of like the structure of the process beneath Bitcoin. And so we're trying to quantify the energy. That was the original goal here was to get outside of any fiat referential system here and just look at Bitcoin base as a physical transformation. And so that's kind of the base level. But one thing that I wanted to add to that in terms of you brought up time space is that we kind of have to take a step back here and just say, objectively looking at Bitcoin, what is a block?

29:43And we see Bitcoin blocks as time itself. And so Bitcoin is empirical evidence that time may be quantized. So when you look at the block itself, it is indivisible temporally. It's all or none. There's no valid half work. There's not even a valid half hash. It's like the hash is quantized, the block is quantized, the value units are quantized, and time is quantized. every aspect is quantized. That's just the observation we've made. Every aspect is quantized. And so the other system, not every aspect is quantized. And this is the initial thing we're observing and then trying to map and make sense of.

30:22Which goes back to your original comment at the very beginning, which was boundary layers and being able to, right? There's a boundary every step of the way. Everything has a boundary, including time. You know, that's major for physics because all of physics right now relies on this assumption that time is continuous, because there has been no proof prior to that there could be an alternative. People have theorized that people like Stephen Wolfram have begun to work on these ideas. And so we think he's really close to what we see. We think he's missing Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is the instantiation of what he's working on.

30:58It's like the proof needs a network. It needs to be filled with energy. It's a proof that needs to prove itself, to put it in layman's terms. But when you look at the block, you can't break it up into smaller temporal components. At layer one, the block is the smallest unit of time. Nothing happens between blocks. I mean, we know that lightning exists between there, and I don't want to go in there because, I mean, that's a whole different can of worms that this paper can unlock in terms of thought. But staying on layer one, there's no time between blocks. The block is this quantized tick of time.

31:33And to bring it back to time space, when you look at what time is in Bitcoin, I think Gigi wrote about time, I think it was in 2020. And so everyone should go and read his piece about time as well. But he talks about the map being the territory. And that's kind of philosophical for some people. And if I was to put it in more layman's terms, It's like time is memory in Bitcoin and the memory is time. They're both the same dimension. It's like the memory that's produced in the block is the time itself. And that memory is lasting. And so when you look at the dimensionality, it's time and memory are a surface that exists in a coordinate of time, which is just the block height.

32:18So it's like the block height is the coordinate system. And at each block height, you have this time memory component where it's like a sheet of memory where time equals memory. Only in that discrete unit of time is that true. Every block is a different measurement. It's a different event. And so this is the process of understanding discrete time. And so I would kind of finish it here is like, if the block wasn't the measurement in Bitcoin and the ledger evolved continuously until somebody observed it and it became deterministic. It's like, how do you solve the double spend problem without a quantized measurement?

32:58And so if you really begin to think logically about Bitcoin, it's like without that stamping, that quantized stamp of like, this is time, there is no solution to the double spend. And so logically, Bitcoin could not exist if the time that it produced was continuous. And so here we are sitting at this discovery of, we're just saying like the time produced by Bitcoin is objectively quantized. And if that is, and here's my point, it's like you realize that the quantization of time is the thing that produces the binary logic. And what does that mean? Physics says classical information. It means it's this or that.

33:34It can't be both. It can't be double spent. A UTXL in Bitcoin must be spent or unspent. The Satoshis are here or there. It can't be both. And if it was a continuous process, Bitcoin wouldn't function. And so we couldn't build any logic on top of the system without that quantized tick of time. And we know, looking at physics, that information becomes classical. And so we are looking at something that is quantizing time, creating binary logic. And Bitcoin simply just says, if it's not the tick of time, if that's not the measurement, then what is? And so that question just leaves a lot of open-endedness, but we take the measurement as being the tick of time.

34:15And so all we've tried to do is apply that model backward to physics and try to rediscover, or not rediscover, but put together the same picture with a different process underneath it. Like physics emerges from time. It's a derivative of time. So time is beneath everything that we experience. And if we just like ground all that, it's just like, is this empirical evidence for one of the two options, which is, is time a continuous only process or is time a discrete process? And we can at least look at Bitcoin as an isolated physical system that's running regardless of what our opinions of it are, it's running.

34:57And every single block is an empirical piece of evidence for that truth. And we're observing it. and it's a discrete form of time. And so if that's the case, and on the other side, we don't know whether time is or isn't continuous or discrete, we can at least look and point at Bitcoin and say, well, we at least have one physical system that operates on a discrete process. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why Vanta is a game changer. Vanta automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform.

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39:17on the show a couple of times, Shannon entropy counts uncertainty over symbols. There's no operational bridge between bits and jewels, which is what these two different theories are about. And so you're positing in the paper that there might be a bridge between these two. And this is the first time I've ever seen anything presented that suggests that there is a bridge and you're using Bitcoin as, again, the model to kind of demonstrate that bridge between these two very profound ideas that Boltz meant entropy and Shannon entropy. Yeah, I mean, this was one of the hardest problems for us to solve.

39:54Originally, this whole discovery of time was kind of a derivative of our initial inquiry. We originally started this paper just to measure Bitcoin and jewels. That's what we wanted to do. And it led to so much more and it demanded so much more because as we were kind of continually pulling on the string, just more and more of reality kind of began to reveal itself for us. And so looking at entropy in Bitcoin, we've never really had a process that kind of puts both together. And so everyone says Bitcoin's backed by energy. And so when you're looking at the construction of Bitcoin, we have a 32-bit non-space, and we have some quantization of difficulty.

40:35Difficulty is integer number of units. And Simply put, difficulty decreases the probability of a valid nonce in that 32-bit nonce space. So it's the frequency that a valid nonce will appear within that space. And so conceptually, we can think of that space as entropy. We can quantify it as entropy. And so when you're looking at the probability, the decrease in probability is the same thing as an increase in multiplicity. So for the layman, it's like you have a 32-bit space. it multiplies the number of those spaces that you need to search to find a valid answer. So very simply put, you have a block of 32-bit or a box of 32-bits that you can kind of search for this nonce in.

41:23And difficulty just says you have to search that many of those 32-bit boxes on average to find a nonce. And so we're trying to quantify entropy here. And so when you're looking at the process of Bitcoin, it's you have entropy on one side, and then you have work applied to that entropy, and we'll call it, it happens under some temperature. We know hashing produces temperature, and the outcome is a block, which is some quantifiable amount of information. And so we want to be clear here that when we're talking about the Shannon side, it's not the bits of physical information. It's not the megabyte of the block itself.

41:59We're literally looking at the finite state space of Satoshis. We're looking at the configuration of the Satoshis because that is what is conserved through time. It's like as time progresses through blocks, the container around that is the 21 million cap. And so we have a system that started from 50 Bitcoin and it's trending towards 21 million. And so each unit of time, the amount of Satoshis like existing in the system changes with each block. And so you have to account for that change. And so I might've drifted a little bit from what you asked, but Bitcoin just gives us these two processes. Objectively, mining produces heat in the form of Kelvin and Bitcoin produces information in the form of a unique configuration of Satoshis in the network that you can measure.

42:47And so it's like you have both sides of this process known. We know the difficulty and we know the non-space before that. And afterwards, we know the exact block and the difficulty that it was mined under. Like, we know all of this from beginning to end. And so, the hardest part was, how do we now relate these two things into one unified system? I mean, that'll go kind of deep. I don't know if you want to go there in this conversation, because it's kind of going to Boltzmann's constant itself, and how do we rethink through the ledger and how to redefine past variables in physics. So, that's where we want to go here.

43:21I think it's worth going a little deeper there. I know we'll lose some of it. Don't you think, I agree. Yeah, I would love to hear more on it. Yeah. So very simply put, the original goal was joules per Satoshi. And so the only equations that we had without making it up is the second law of thermodynamics, which gives us a relationship of temperature, internal energy, entropy, and it assumes constant volume and a constant number of molecules or of substance, we'll call it. When looking at like a Satoshi, the Satoshi is the atomic unit of Bitcoin. The one Bitcoin of 21 million is the quantum of value.

44:00And so this is what defines all value. And so it's imperative that that 21 million does not change. And so the Satoshi is the resolution that you can perceive that value. So it's how do we break that unit of one into smaller and smaller components? And so the Satoshi is the smallest unit of value that Bitcoin represents. And so when you look at the word Bitcoin, it's like, That is what the Satoshi is. We call it a value bit. You can call it a Bitcoin, whatever you want, but objectively it is a single bit of value inside that system. I mean, it's tough. It's like there's three worlds and we've forever talked about two worlds.

44:38Again, you can think of the classical framework or the computational framework. We understand there's a domain of computational systems and then you have physical reality and these are two separate processes. So talking about Shannon is talking about mathematics and computation and then talking about Boltzmann is talking about physical, physical process, you know, thermodynamics. And so we're trying to talk about is this again bridge between them that is how does Boltzmann convert into Shannon and then one makes this a real number objectively within the system that records it okay i remember what i was going to say yeah go ahead jack so you asked like how do we bridge the two right so it goes back to boltzman's constant and so we wanted joules per satoshi and the only thing that relates entropy to energy is boltzman's constant that's the only really known thing in physics here and so we have to look at the dimensionality of boltzman's constant it's joules per kelvin and so and remember, this whole process of applying Bitcoin onto the universe, it's like, what does the universe look like if Bitcoin or the ledger is its structure?

45:47And so we already kind of covered time earlier, but now we're going to cover what is 21 million? If the universe had a 21 million equivalent, what would it look like? And so objectively, we're talking about a thermodynamic transition, we're getting Satoshis in the block. And so we're looking for something that exhibits It's a similar behavior to Satoshi's, but in the universe. And so it must be bounded like that. Remember, the boundary is the most important piece here. I'm laughing because I see where you're going. This is crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. Like it objectively is crazy. I think it's like literally a truth we've just always taken for granted.

46:27Absolute zero. Is that what you have? You have absolute Bitcoin defines like the absolute zero and the absolute one. And what that really means is it just defines the boundary that you can define one and zero within. It's very complex. But going back to Boltzmann's constant, it's like, what in the universe would be similar to that? Well, like, we have Kelvin. And we know that Planck energy has a limit. There is a limit at which physics says, at Planck temperature, the known understanding of temperature breaks down. And so, like, what does that mean? It's like when you apply the ledger to it, it just means like nothing outside of this boundary can logically make sense.

47:06And so when you're looking at Bitcoin, it's the same thing as 21 million. Nothing outside of 21 million can have the ledger make sense. It's like once you exceed this number, nothing makes sense. And so we're not saying that Planck temperature is the temperature of the beginning. We're just saying that this thing represents what appears to be the equivalent of the 21 million boundary. And so when we multiply Boltzmann's constant by Planck temperature to normalize for this full boundary system, you can remove the domain of Kelvin. And so when you do that, you're left with simply joules. You know, you have joules per Kelvin and you multiply by Planck temperature, which is in Kelvin, you're left with joules.

47:48And when you do that, you realize you get Planck energy, which is what the physicists say is the energy of the universe. Well, through the lens of the ledger, it actually just says that this is actually a constant. If Boltzmann's constant is the relationship of entropy and joules, and we remove the domain of Kelvin from this equation because it's bounded, then we have this purely joules constant. And so I guess we have to take a step back here a little bit. And it's because we all think in absolute terms. Like our understanding of temperature is in absolute terms. Like we all know, sorry for you know, the Europeans, but we all know water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, at normal conditions.

48:28And so we can think of that as a constant. And so when we apply this boundary of plank temperature, it's actually a constant ratio. So I know I'm switching between Kelvin and Fahrenheit here. And the reason why we're using Kelvin is because it defines the absolute zero. It's, it makes more logical sense. And so what do I really mean by that? It's like every unit of Bitcoin that you have or you perceive, you can always perceive it with respect to the denominator. And the denominator changes with time. Everyone thinks 21 million, and Nick and I have gone back and forth as, does 21 million exist now or does it exist in the future?

49:05And objectively, when you're looking at it through the lens of thermodynamics, it exists through the future, but we can also say that it exists now in some sense. but all measurement must be relative to the boundary. And so now you're kind of getting into, you know, we said the defining of absolute zero and absolute one. It's like when you take all measurement and put it against the boundary, you are only bounded between zero and one. You cannot exceed zero and one. And so like, what is the most generally relative thing? I would call it the space between zero and one in the most purest mathematical sense.

49:41And so when you're looking at Bitcoin, it's like, that's what you get. You get one, you get zero, and everything that exists must be between those two things. And it all must sum up to one. You can never exceed supply or the boundary. Yeah. And so in Bitcoin, you see the rules that allow that assumption to hold true. Because again, we're saying zero and one and the space between. But until now, that's literally an assumption that we've had to use, not an external physical system from us that enforces that truth every step of the way to make sure that truth holds at the end of the process the whole way through.

50:19And so to us, again, clearly the universe must hold that same rule somewhere within it. And so if not, how could the universe not have a symmetry of that? Yeah. It might be worth going into, because if this is true, there's zero risk of quantum attack on Bitcoin. It's an entirely different model, similar to a fiat model being able to provide value forever. Would you dive into - Yeah, let's pull on that thread. Let's pull on that thread, Andrei, because it is literally an either or. It cannot both be true. Explain why it's an either or, because I don't know that I necessarily understand that, Jeff.

50:58So the reason why it's either or it's like it's Bitcoin or it's quantum in terms of quantum computers. And the reason why I say that is because it relies on the ontology of time itself. Bitcoin, well, like we said, Bitcoin literally wouldn't work if the blocks were just these continuous morphing thing. Like it needs to be discrete and quantized. So right there, we have some contradiction to this axiom of continuous time that all physics relies on. Like we want to make a no, it's like both general relativity and quantum mechanics both assume continuous time. And so if you pull that assumption away and say, no, it's discrete, like we have to actually rebuild those theories from the bottom up again with this new understanding of time.

51:42Jack, can I just keep going? But I just wanted to kind of, when you say continuous time, if we were in continuous time, the question is, would we know it? Because we can't, essentially what you're saying is the idea of quantum, the very idea, this is the measurement of the discrete, tiny-estigma unit. And we would never be able to observe that through our lens within it. That's what I mean. Yeah. I think it's really ironic that if you do change the substance of time from continuous, and what we really mean by continuous is infinitely divisible, you can just keep breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces.

52:17And Bitcoin says no. At some limit there's the block and you can't go any further you must commit to a standard measurement a global measurement and so like we perceive in seconds and so this is some magnitude like it's a ginormous magnitude of frequency of like these fundamental blocks but you could think of bitcoin in larger units of time as like multiples of blocks like every 10 blocks every 100 blocks is a frequency of time but you need to even build what a frequency means and physics believes that you can just keep dividing forever. And so if that assumption changes, going back to the quantum question, it's like, how does that affect quantum computing?

52:58Because everyone is talking about quantum as this inevitable thing that Bitcoin must bend the knee to, but Bitcoin actually is proving quite the opposite to our lens. And so the reason why it's binary is because the ontology of time matters. You can't double spend what is true about time. It's either quantized, discrete, and indivisible at some level, or it's continuous and infinitely divisible. It can't be both. So Jack, but we have, just to push back a little bit on this idea. So we do have quantum computers that already exist. They're microscopic in scale with respect to the number of qubits that they can perform at, right?

53:37I think from a logical Cupid standpoint, we're like less than 30. I think it's under 15, right? Maybe even under 15, but it does exist. Would this be almost like a block reorder? I'm trying to think of the parallel in Bitcoin that would allow something like that to exist in a very small scale, but then never scale to a higher level. Would it be like a block reorg of time that the parallel blocks were being found and then they get reorged and get definitized so you could never like have something that has, I'm just spitballing here. I have no idea. Like I might be a crazy person. And I think we all might be crazy people in the same thing, right?

54:14But exploring this as part of the, so my layman's version of that is you have all these probability states. And if you develop a logical qubit, then these probability states at the tiniest increment of time aren't actually coexisting. And as you expand the probability states, you get errors and errors on the other side. And so now you're building all of these error correction into the thing because you can't at the smallest and they think in it and you believe it can exist because you're not measuring time. Yeah. Like we are not measuring time. We are approximating time. That is the distinction.

54:53Yeah. So I would say it's like, it's not saying that like what they're observing is invalid, they're observing something, right? And I think it's really what they perceive they're observing is different from what is actually occurring. They think something is happening, but fundamentally something else is happening. And it all depends on the ontology of time. And so I was saying, it's Bitcoin or it's quantum. It can't be both. And what do I really mean by that? It's like, when you ask the question, if time is quantized and discreet, how do these models change? What changes? And so I don't want to go deep into the formalism because that's kind of getting outside of my domain of expertise here.

55:33But simply put, for the listener, you can't take the derivative on, say, Schrodinger's equation if time is an integer. If at some level it's indivisible, then you can't take the derivative. And so the entire formalism would need to be reorganized to this change in time. And so that is a whole different domain of physics, we are seeing a fracture in physics itself where there's the people who are appended to the continuous time and they're trying to make it work and they keep hitting dead ends. And so if this is true, if time is really quantized and discreet, it's like they're continuing to work on the sinking ship.

56:11It's a sunken cost that they can't fix. The problem is the assumption. It's not what they're doing. And so you do have other domains of physics where, say we brought up Stephen Wolfram, he is approaching physics from the other side, which is the discrete nature. But we need to look at what actually changes when time is discretized. And so very simply put, what happens to, or what is superposition or decoherence in a discrete time model? And so Bitcoin gives us that lens of what superposition actually is. it gives us an understanding of what physicists are actually observing when they call superposition, and that would be the mempool.

56:51It's a pre-configured state of possibility, but it doesn't actually exist until it's measured. And this is like in the language of physics itself. They know like this is the pre-measured state, and when it's observed, it becomes measured and deterministic, but they don't have the process of how this goes from superimposed to classical. And so essentially, this isn't a substrate to actually compute on. It's a potential state. It's not a computable state. And so when time is discretized, the meaning of superposition changes because it is pre-time. And then when you're looking at decoherence, decoherence is the natural process of the measurement itself.

57:32And so it's like, these words are all inverted. Bitcoin is actually saying no. What physicists call decoherence is actually really coherent. It's reality cohering to a single chain of events. They think this is a problem that you must engineer away. We need to maintain these superimposed states so that we can perform this computation. And oh no, it keeps decohering to these classical states. It's like, without that decoherence mechanism, you don't have an objective reality. And so Bitcoin is simply just saying, no, this is the process of time occurring, and they don't actually understand what they're looking at.

58:08I'm somewhat speechless. It seems that if we do start getting quantum computers with a thousand cupids or more or whatever logical cupids, that it would be almost an invalidation of this entire thesis. Would you agree with that? Yes. And the goal is not to invalidate it. It's just trying to take the logic where it goes and just say, this is incompatible with the basically autopilot perception of like, this is inevitable. This is going to happen. This is what quantum computers are going to do. Quantum computers are going to break all encryption, which is one of their primary fundamental use cases.

58:46And so if Bitcoin is literally, in our opinion, the definition of encryption at a global, every state level, the conversation changes. And right now, again, it's based on the ontology of time and understanding what is time. So that entire model has been built on, you know, and ironically, we're talking about quantizing reality. And yet quantizing means to find like the discrete points there. It's like, that's what we're saying it is. And yet time gets a pass and by default, it's always continuous. How can that be the case? How can we say, yes, this type of science is meant to define everything in absolute terms, but time, that's continuous.

59:32Yeah. Like simply put, it's very ironic that to the listeners, it's like, go ask chat GPT yourself. Like, don't trust me, but like, we want to make sure you ask the right questions. But if time is quantized and discreet, the entire formalism of quantum mechanics, as we know it, like breaks, it just simply doesn't work. It would have to be rebuilt. It's ironic that quantizing time breaks the system that was supposed to quantize everything. So Jack, this is so big and that's kind of why I just kind of it took me in the beginning and it took breasts because they're incompatible. They are. But just like, and I think this for the listener, if you were listening to some of the stuff on Bitcoin about the environment and how could you solve the environment from a system that must destroy the environment.

1:00:22If you ask the question about money, right? How could you solve any of those problems by a system? The amount of money and nonsense and everything else inside that system, right? Because it requires that the amount of money inside all of the research universities and everything else on quantum is going to attack this thesis like crazy, right? Because the power of everything. Which is the real signal, by the way. Which is the power of everything comes from that. We've learned in Bitcoin is over and over and over, the more you move into the system, the more individuals move into the system, the more you're just immune from this entire, essentially, bull thing based on a foundation of lies.

1:01:07It actually gets stronger and stronger by your participation in it. And so these two things are incompatible. What I find interesting in this is our own agency inside this is being co-opted in the quantum because we don't trust ourselves in this. And there always has to be somebody else that's smarter. What does that mean if, again, like quantum physics, theoretical physics, let alone just quantum physics, but this domain, there are many interpretations and those interpretations are actually proliferating over time. So we are seeing a fracture in like what is actually happening at these scales that we can't perceive with our own individual eyes.

1:01:49And then we have to default to experts who study those models for the majority of their lives. And then we have to take on faith that what they're presenting back to us is what they say it is. And so is it possible that Bitcoin is this other model where you can get this more universal language understanding where anybody, no matter what institution you're a part of, can actually be observing and talking about the same phenomena without any specialized group who if you're not part of you know the in crowd then you don't understand what's going on and that's actually what I think is most exciting about this work is you know like regardless of whatever profound insights at an individual level can happen it's also just like it's something that I think that over time is shareable with a wider audience than just the people that dedicate themselves to basically a path that was laid out way before they came along, right?

1:02:48We've been on this model for 80 to 100 years in terms of our theoretical physics. And again, there's never been a true alternative to that path. So it's just everybody working on it, like Jeff said, all the money being plowed into it, it's already tied to an incentive that is separate from the theoretical physics itself. There's already a money machine behind it. So you realize that all of the information that's been shared with us over time, like you don't know what the error rate is, but you do know there is an error rate. You know, if you're not willing to perhaps question like how deep does the error go, then how can you truly know are we living in a truthful system of knowledge around us?

1:03:35Guys, what would be your closing comment to folks as they hear this whole conversation? What do you want to leave them with as they kind of put their phone down, take their AirPods out of their ears? What is the takeaway you want them to have? I guess I'll go first. My message is if Bitcoin is proof that time is quantized and discreet, we need to look at this quantum narrative for what it is. And that would be, it's simply an attack on Bitcoin that is masquerading as physics operating through the lens of language and psychology. And so I would say everyone, if you understand Bitcoin, you understand physics.

1:04:19I want the physics community to answer like, why is Bitcoin not an open source laboratory? Why is this not an open source experiment? It literally uses energy and creates an outcome. This is a process. This is a measurement. Why does it not suffice for the physics community? And so we need to just like look at what this narrative really is. The narrative is Bitcoin is broken or it will be broken. We need to upgrade it. And until quantum was the narrative, the old meme was like, hey, I'm new here to Bitcoin and I'm here to fix it. It's like, hey, I just read about quantum and I'm here to fix Bitcoin.

1:04:56It's the same thing. And so I would say, don't bet against Bitcoin and really don't assume the narratives that you hear to be true. And just simply try to go into exploring this idea because Bitcoin just says, don't trust, verify. And so it's like, who are you trusting with this information? Who are the people telling you that Bitcoin is broken? What is their incentive? What is their knowledge? If we don't actually understand this base physical process beneath Bitcoin, we risk misunderstanding what Bitcoin is. And so one point that we didn't hit on that I think is very important, it's like, objectively, our conscious decisions precede the block.

1:05:35Our transactions and our decision to do work, and we call the protocol itself, all of that precedes the block itself. And so everyone wants to talk about upgrading Bitcoin through protocol. And we're forgetting the other half. Jeff, you always say, it's like, we are Bitcoin. And it's like, that's literally true. The ledger is the map of our decisions. It is equally an imprint of our conscious decisions of how we value things, when we valued it, who we valued it with, and what was actually done. And it's simply just a record of that. And so if we have a bug in our mind, we have a bug in the ledger itself.

1:06:12The error that we perceive Bitcoin, whatever we perceive it as, if that is incomplete or wrong, then we are going to manifest that through our action. And so we need to be very careful here. It's like, we're not saying that Bitcoin needs to be upgraded. We're saying that Bitcoiners need to be upgraded. We need to change the way we think, and we need to change the way we act, and we need to finally understand what Bitcoin is. This problem has been going on for 17 years. It's like, all we're trying to do is objectively look at Bitcoin for what it is as a physical process. And we think that anyone who does this should arrive at the same results that we do.

1:06:51And if you don't, let's talk about it. Let's figure this out. We're not saying that this answer is done. This answer, this paper is literally just the beginning. It's just a tool to continue forward. I said it to Jeff a long time ago, this is a paper about boundaries and drawing the boundary on the paper was the hardest part because you can literally take any domain of knowledge and run with it, run with this idea. And everything changes if you change the ontology of time. And so if you want to like a little call to action, it's here. It's like biology is waiting, chemistry is waiting. It's like, go and do it.

1:07:23Somebody please. All epistemology, all ontology, there's an opportunity to reassess all of them through the lens of Bitcoin. And so this is just simply meant to be a lens, but a verification tool for science, logic, and just our individual ability to objectively look at things without depending on, again, domains of knowledge that we inherited. I think what I want to leave people with is, if you don't think you have a fiat mindset, I don't think you're thinking hard enough. Like we were born into this system. There's no way our minds don't have a fiat perception of reality. You know, fiat being the euphemism for just simply you're in an incomplete system.

1:08:11You have an incomplete understanding. When you finally see a complete system and you still default to answering with the incomplete system's answers to explain the complete one, how can that make sense? Yeah. Break free of your past memories and create the new, right? This is amazing, guys. Absolutely amazing. I want to highlight one thing. Conversation. Can I jump in real quick? Yeah, no, you're right. Just for me and what this exposes and what everything for a long time has exposed in Bitcoin is the stuff we talk about all the time, 8 billion people in service of 8 billion people. For your entire life, you've been told you belong here and you believe that you belong here.

1:08:56You are part of a system and Jack and Nick and Preston and all of the people that we love in this space are part of a system that is both contributing to a new system and that every single person can move their time. And that's what this is observing. And so when we see these seemingly crazy ideas, it adds to our proof of work and the knowledge and everything else and extends our understanding. We change. And that's coming from us. We are both parts of it. So it gives me shivers, same as you, to be a part of this crazy change inside of time, right? that were a part of it. It's just so wild. I love when you bring this point up, Jeff, because at the end of the day, you're talking about attention.

1:09:43And when you look at what has caused all these AIs to become so powerful with what it is that they're able to, it all came down to attention being the core thing that the humans unlocked in order to create this intelligence boom, right? And you're talking about that exact point. And it's like, it just makes so much sense that when you place your attention on where you want the world to go and what you want that to look like, that you can pull that into the block that's being mined or minted, right? So excited. Guys, and Jeff, I'm sorry for the handoff. We talk literally every day and it just dawned on me that, yeah, you're a guest on the show and we're recording a podcast and this isn't just another conversation that I'm having with you about other things.

1:10:28Where can people read the paper if they want to read the paper. Yeah, well, Jeff has kind of pushed an accelerator pedal on us and there's still a lot more work we're doing and a lot of refinements because, you know, it would have been funny when we talked over summer, this would have almost been a lot easier to talk about, but there's just been so much more on, you know, like again, uncovered. And so there's so much more that could be talked about in terms of getting us to a timestamp of like, okay, at least open up the conversation. We are now at the domain BitcoinLens.net. Okay. That's where we're going to host it and we'll make refinements, share updates, and show that process and hopefully invite people to not just read the work, but if they have ideas, share it, point out little errors, whatever you find, the place that they can find us will be the BitcoinLens.net.

1:11:24You guys put up the boundary and now everybody's going to come in and they're going to be able to pick it apart. And you know what? This is wonderful because I think the influx of intellectual horsepower that you're going to get coming to this site, picking apart, for instance, if you enjoyed the entropy discussion and you want to see all the equations and all the hard work that these guys have poured into that and the energy that these guys have poured into it, it's in section six of the paper, right? So go to section six, dig into it, find out why you disagree or why you think that there's additive information there.

1:11:57And this is a living, I'm speaking on your behalf, but I, knowing you guys, this is a living document. You guys are more interested in truth than credit or any of that kind of stuff. And that's another reason I think Jeff and I are so excited about you guys putting this out there and getting this conversation going. Go ahead, Jeff. Yeah, we want to, with you guys, like literally, we want to create, the way we see it, I think, is like the collective white paper for the white paper that is that final global mirror of what is Bitcoin. And something I want to note is just, we've had so many definitions of what is Bitcoin that's pushed the narrative forward that we've all developed through.

1:12:37And we've thought, wow, wow, wow, over and over again, Bitcoin is a pair-to-pair electronic cash system. That's the pinnacle right there. But over time, we've seen these lenses, windows, Bitcoin is time, as Gigi gave us. And then Bitcoin is digital energy, as Saylor gave us. And many, many other people have created all these different lenses. And so this is just an attempt to realize like, wow, we can actually kind of pull all of those different lenses together to see the same thing. I just want to make it very clear too, to the audience, like, we don't want to make this our theory or our paper.

1:13:15If what we're saying is true, this is important for every single Bitcorner to know and have. This is not something to be centralized and controlled. It's knowledge that deserves to be out there. So we don't want to claim the absolute authority over this paper. It's just somebody needed to start the process and to create the framework at which people can iterate from. So I'm sure you'll find some things that you may disagree with or you agree with, and it's like, bring them forward to us or help do the work. Because it's like, this is an ongoing process of us really discovering what we live in, in terms of the universe and what Bitcoin is and how the two are related to each other.

1:13:55And it's really just the most fascinating time because I think this paper really just demands all knowledge be re-observed through Bitcoin. And so it's like, there's a lot of work to be done. And so we need help. Just anybody can help doing whatever they see, however they can see it fitting. The part of the show that I enjoy the most nowadays is here at the very end, we have this fun little tradition that we've started of taking the conversation that we just talked about and we turn it into a song. And then we play the song for the outro for the listeners. You guys aren't going to hear the song right now because we still got to generate it.

1:14:31And it takes all the stuff that we talked about and it turns that into the song. So I'm curious if either one of you, Jack or Nick, if you're really got a hardcore preference for an artist or a music type genre, if either one of you guys has something, just say it. And that's what the listener is going to hear as we play the outro here. For music style or an artist? Style or an artist, or even a song that you just love. I'm a global lover of music. It's hard to pick a preference, but I try to find music that unifies the analog world and the digital world. I don't know, maybe what comes to mind, I think is there's a group called Odessa and they're very good at synthesizing electronic and analog instruments into something that I think is a unique frequency that I think has absolutely impacted my ability to think about Bitcoin.

1:15:24So shout out to Odessa for helping this Bitcoin journey for me. I wouldn't point to like a single artist, but I would just say like, I'm a punk at heart. And so like we're rocking the boat. And so, you know, we might as well have fun with it. I love it. All right. Well, guys, thank you so much for making time. We're going to have handles. Are you guys both on X and Noster? Just Noster. Just Noster. Nick, how about you? I have the handles. I've been off social media. And again, this conversation is debate whether I engage with that, you know, outside conversation that maybe will take place from having a conversation with you guys.

1:16:03But the tag, I believe, is pleb Nick on both Noster and X. Okay. I'll have the links to Jack, Nick, and Jeff, obviously, over on Noster. And we'll have the link to the website where the paper's going to be hosted. And guys, check it out. Enjoy the song.

1:16:36At the threshold, everything's pending Ghosts in a ledger Waiting for a witness Waves in a lattice All these may be worlds Folded like paper Begging to be opened

1:17:20And

1:17:31States on standby Frozen in a shrug Tiny coin flips balancing on nothing Your hand, my choice, hovers on a key Collapse the shimmer, name what used to break Time is not a river, time is a heartbeat Pulse by pulse, the possible complete Blocks of light ticking into being All that we were, locked in the seams Time is not a river, time is a heartbeat Pulse by pulse, the possible completes Moments don't flow, they shatter at length Step after step on a disappearing break

1:18:46Entropy and energy Spinning at the edge of memory Trembling on the smallest ledge Where every truth is paid

1:19:04Entropy and energy Trading masks in secret holes Spinning out of fragile friends Where maybe never falls Time is not a river, time is a heartbeat Pulse by pulse, the possible completes Blocks of light ticking into being All that we are, etched in routines Time is not a river, time is a heartbeat Pulse by pulse, the possible completes Moments don't flow, they shatter in length Step after step on a disappearing brain Zero point whispers under proof of work Silent choirs under every search Quantum fields come beneath the proof of work Click by click we certify the world

1:20:27Oh, God.

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