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ARTEL 21: Bitcoin Memory
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The Architecture of Memory

Every sat is a bit. The chain is RAM becoming disk.

June 2026
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The RAM

The UTXO set is active memory. 2,099,999,999,755,528 sats = 2.1 quadrillion bits = 262.5 TB. Finite. Bounded. Unfolding through halvings. Every sat is a bit. Every block fills some bits and empties others. Below: the fill curve, the write rate, and the cumulative surface.

RAM Utilization
cumulative W / 2,099,999,999,755,528. The fill curve of Bitcoin's RAM. Asymptotic to 100%.
Write Rate (sats/block)
subsidy + fees per block. The bandwidth of new bits entering active memory. Halvings visible as step drops.
Cumulative Bits
Total inscribed value through each block. The total active memory at each moment.
Subsidy / Fee Ratio
fees / subsidy. The transition from subsidy-dominated to fee-dominated write rate. Approaches infinity at the last halving.
Cumulative Fees
Total fees accumulated through each block. The transition from subsidy-funded to fee-funded security budget.

The Disk

Every block commits one irreversible transition from RAM to permanent storage. The blockchain is accumulated memory. Nothing is erased. Below: the commit rate and cumulative disk surface.

Commit Rate (bytes/block)
tau per block. Rate at which active memory freezes to permanent storage. 1 MB pre-SegWit, up to 4 MB post-SegWit.
Cumulative Bytes
Total permanent memory committed to the chain. The accumulated disk surface.
Value Density (sats/byte)
W / tau. How many bits of value compress into each byte of permanent storage. Genesis: ~17.5M sats/byte. Today: ~400 sats/byte. The chain cools.
Identity Ratio
tau / vsize. Pre-SegWit: 1.0. Post-SegWit: up to 4.0. The red line is A = A.

The Architecture

Active memory grows toward 262.5 TB. Permanent memory grows at ~1 MB/block. The fee market measures memory pressure. The energy per committed bit shows how far above the Landauer floor the network operates.

Active vs Permanent Memory
Active bits (cumulative sats) vs permanent bits (cumulative bytes × 8). Two memory surfaces, one chain.
Memory Pressure (sat/vB)
Fee rate over time. The fee market as a memory pressure gauge: how much users pay to commit state transitions.
Energy per Committed Bit (J/bit)
cumulative energy / (cumulative bytes × 8). J per bit committed to permanent storage. The green dashed line is the Landauer limit at room temperature (2.8 × 10⁻²¹ J/bit). Use ranges to see different orders of magnitude.
Est. block 952769 · GitLab