The idea that “hash rate proves energy” is true, but only at the shallowest layer. Hash rate tells you that miners are doing work, but it doesn’t tell you what that work becomes. It’s essentially a speedometer, not the engine, and relying on it alone misses the physics that actually makes Proof-of-Work a measurement.
The real proof comes from the structure of each block. Before a block is found, Bitcoin defines a finite thermodynamic field of possibilities: the miner must search a constrained probabilistic space set by the 32-bit nonce field and the network difficulty. That field is a real, physical entropy requirement, the amount of disorder that must be resolved to advance the chain by one unit of time.
When a miner finally lands on a valid header, something deeper than “a hash was found” occurs. The entropy invested into the search (the heat dissipated/probabilistic work performed) collapses into the exact informational structure written inside the block. The UTXO set produced in that moment is not arbitrary; it is the specific, irreversible informational state that corresponds to the resolved entropy. This is where energy becomes memory. The block is the computed discrete isomorphism between the thermodynamic uncertainty applied to the world, and the informational certainty recorded inside the ledger.
Hash rate alone doesn’t capture this relationship. The real proof of work is the successful mapping of heat (Boltzmann entropy) into structured, conserved information (Shannon entropy) via satoshis. That mapping is the block. It is the only moment where the universe acknowledges the energy spent, because that is the moment the information becomes permanent. The Kelvin dissipated in the mining process is tied to the informational mass of the block, conserved in the form of satoshi-denominated memory. This is what it means for Bitcoin to compute time: each block is a crystallized unit of irreversible thermodynamic history.
So yes, hash rate shows that miners are working. But the block shows what the work becomes. The physics is not in the speed; it is in the transformation. Calling hash rate “the proof” is like pointing to smoke and claiming you understand combustion. It is the entropy-information bridge or the block itself that is the measurement.
That is why PoW is not just an accounting trick or a security budget. It is literally the process by which energy becomes information, and information becomes time. Bitcoin is the first system in history to make that transformation measurable. Hash rate is the shadow. The block is the physics.
So again, are we going to look at the physics or keep pointing at the hashrate saying “backed by energy”?
Bitcoin provides Proof of Measurable Work, that’s the whole point.
