Bitcoin is still running on Moscow Time — thanks to Dorsey’s Bitcoin clock
Ask Bitcoin Twitter what time it is. Chances are they’ll say: “It’s Moscow Time.”
Moscow Time is a Bitcoin meme inadvertently spawned by cybersecurity researcher Chris Vickery in March.
During Twitter billionaire Jack Dorsey’s video call on fake news with the House committee, Vickery thought he’d cracked a mystery surrounding a weird clock sitting in Dorsey’s room.
Vickery spotted something wasn’t right. Dorsey’s clock read “1952” — far too late for Dorsey’s purported location as the sun was still out behind him.
Instead, Vickery posited Dorsey had set the clock to Russian hours. But this was also strange as the sun had already set over in Moscow.
So, if Dorsey wasn’t in Moscow but his clock told Moscow Time, what was Dorsey trying to say?
Vickery reckoned this was Dorsey’s way of “blinking in Morse code,” so to speak — a way to signal Russia’s ties to disinformation in the US.
Moscow Time counts down as Bitcoin’s price increases
Dorsey’s gizmo was actually a Blockclock Mini, a so-called “Bitcoin art piece” from cold wallet manufacturer Coinkite.
- Blockclocks can show how many Satoshis (Bitcoin’s smallest unit) one can buy for $1.
- During Dorsey’s call, $1 could buy 1952 ‘sats’ — a number coincidentally similar to the time in Moscow.
- Dorsey’s clock also briefly showed Bitcoin’s ‘block height.’
Vickery even doubled down despite waves of mockery from the Bitcoin crowd. In particular, he highlighted Blockclock’s product page.
There, the company stated Blockclocks can also show local time — which supposedly kept Vickery’s theory alive.
Now, Bitcoin fans use ‘Moscow Time’ interchangeably with the USD-to-sat conversion rate at any given moment.
Simply put, when Bitcoin goes up, Moscow Time goes down.
When Moscow Time hits zero, so-called ‘hyperbitcoinization‘ has occurred — the theoretical moment when Bitcoin has eaten the world, pricing everything in ultra-expensive BTC rather than fiat.
Protos reached out to Vickery for his take on the latest wave of memes but received no comment at press time.
[Read more: Jack Dorsey whipped out his Bitcoin clock and Twitter went wild]
Moscow Time is currently 1877.