The IETF is currently standardizing Bitcoin-anchored temporal proofs for transparency services (draft-fassbend

The IETF is currently standardizing Bitcoin-anchored temporal proofs for transparency services (draft-fassbender-scitt-time-anchor, May 2026), formalizing what courts have already accepted in practice: that a SHA-256 hash committed to a Bitcoin block constitutes verifiable proof that data existed at or before a specific time. This convergence of formal standardization and judicial precedent means independent timestamp verification no longer requires trust in any single timestamping authority — only the computational irreversibility of proof-of-work.