Every trade memo published here is cryptographically hashed and submitted to the Bitcoin network for timestamping. This page explains what that means and lets you verify any record independently, using nothing but tools you can run yourself.
The full position list for each portfolio as of the day it was opened, hashed and submitted to the Bitcoin network. This proves the starting allocation was set before any performance was observed.
Each memo's hash is computed from its canonical string in the format TIMESTAMP|BOOK|TICKER|ACTION|MEMO TEXT. Paste one below and the hash is computed live in your browser — no server involved.
A hash function is a mathematical process that takes any piece of text — a single word, a sentence, an entire book — and converts it into a fixed-length string of characters. Think of it as a fingerprint for data. The fingerprint is exactly 64 characters long regardless of how long the original text is. Every different input produces a different fingerprint. The same input always produces the same fingerprint.
SHA-256 is a one-way function — you can compute the hash from the text, but you cannot reverse-engineer the original text from the hash. More importantly, it is computationally infeasible to find two different texts that produce the same hash. This has been true since SHA-256 was published in 2001 and remains unbroken today.
When a memo is published with its hash, anyone can verify it by computing the hash themselves and comparing. If the text had been altered — even one character changed, one word added, one space removed — the hash would be completely different. The hash is the proof.
Yes — which is why the hash alone is not sufficient proof. You also need to prove when the hash was created. A timestamp you control can be backdated. This is where Bitcoin enters.
Bitcoin produces blocks approximately every 10 minutes. Each block contains a cryptographic reference to the previous block, forming an unbroken chain going back to January 2009. Altering any historical block would require redoing all the computational work that followed it — an impossibility given the scale of the Bitcoin network.
This makes Bitcoin a trustless clock. When a hash is included in a Bitcoin transaction confirmed in block #895,432, it proves the hash existed before that block was mined. Everyone on Earth can verify this independently using the Bitcoin blockchain, which no single entity controls.
The writer Gigi described Bitcoin as "a timestamp machine" in his 2021 essay Bitcoin Is Time. The core insight is that proof-of-work mining is fundamentally a mechanism for agreeing on the passage of time without trusting any central authority. A hash committed to the Bitcoin blockchain is as close to an immutable timestamp as anything that currently exists.
OpenTimestamps (opentimestamps.org) is an open protocol for Bitcoin timestamping created by Bitcoin developer Peter Todd. Rather than paying for a separate Bitcoin transaction for every hash, OpenTimestamps aggregates thousands of hashes into a Merkle tree — a mathematical structure that can prove any individual hash was part of the group — and submits one Bitcoin transaction containing the Merkle root. This makes timestamping essentially free while inheriting Bitcoin's full security guarantees.
The .ots proof file linked on each confirmed memo contains the Merkle path connecting your specific hash to a Bitcoin transaction. Anyone can download this file and verify it independently using open-source tools.
Note: Bitcoin confirmation typically takes a few hours to a few days depending on network congestion. Each memo shows how long confirmation took and the fee rate (sat/vbyte) paid — a real-time indicator of Bitcoin blockspace demand.