Yes, I'm well aware of what Satoshi used. The thing is, the famous "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" quote that's in the

Yes, I'm well aware of what Satoshi used. The thing is, the famous "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" quote that's in the genesis block only proves that the genesis block hash was created after Jan 3rd, 2009. The quote does not prove that the rest of the genesis block was created after that date. That distinction is why random beacons are tricky to use. Sometimes that distinction doesn't matter, sometimes it does. It depends on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. With the Bitcoin genesis block this isn't a problem, as the purpose of the genesis block quote is to show that blocks after the genesis block weren't generated in advance. But in other use-cases - eg the "proof of life via newspaper" example - deep fakes make the security of a random beacon much more dubious. > I was curious about your age since you seem to consider blockchain to be the more generally available than newspapers, whereas to (perhaps older) me, newspapers are the generally available method and blockchain novel I'm wasn't trying to make that claim one way or another. Regardless of what exact type of random beacon you use, the problem I describe above still exists. Now, if you actually do have one of the rare use-cases where random beacons work, these days using Bitcoin as your random beacon is certainly better suited to automation. But whether or not that's relevant depends on what exactly you're trying to achieve.