The Schrödinger equation describes probability amplitudes, not physical states. Superposition, as you defined it (the linear combination of solutions) is a mathematical statement of uncertainty, not a physical statement of simultaneity. To treat those linear combinations as physically coexistent states requires an additional ontological commitment, that the equation describes reality rather than our knowledge of it. This is philosophical, not mathematical, and Bitcoin falsifies it by making measurement endogenous to the system (proof-of-work).
You’re right, Bitcoin’s timestamps are not chronometric. Bitcoin isn’t trying to measure seconds; it measures sequence with irreversible cost. That’s the physical and thermodynamic definition of time: the ordering of causally irreversible events. The Planck time analogy is not about duration; it’s about resolution. A block is locally equivalent to Planck, not universally. Bitcoin gives a finite lower bound on temporal resolution within its local universe: a block cannot occur until entropy is expended and consensus is reached. That is a quantum of causality, not a measure of seconds.
Block intervals are stochastic, but discrete. Each block is an indivisible thermodynamic event: a crystallization of entropy into structure. Quantum mechanics itself is built on the same statistical substrate, discrete but probabilistic transitions. In both systems, events are quantized even when timing is probabilistic. That’s the whole point. Bitcoin computes it as a chain of irreversible outcomes, time is not approximated.
Bitcoin is not a universal clock, it is a universal clock architecture. Every node participates in the same irreversible sequence of measured events, locally resolved but globally consistent. This is relativity in computation form: local perception differs, global conservation holds.
Difficulty is not a measure of wall-clock entropy, it’s a measure of computational entropy resistance, the energy required to collapse one valid state from an exponentially large field of possibilities. That’s as physical a definition of entropy as exists in any system, including statistical mechanics.
Every hash computed is a thermodynamic event and energy spent irreversibly, increasing entropy in the environment. You cannot “reverse” the chain without redoing that work. This is Second Law.
Bitcoin doesn’t measure time like a stopwatch. It measures becoming. Each block is a discrete thermodynamic transition; the only kind of time that actually exists in physics. If you can’t measure the smallest tick of irreversible change, you can’t define simultaneity. Bitcoin g computes that tick locally to its network. Physics has only assumed it universally.