Bitcoin keeps its own clock. Every block is a tick, and the block height, the number of blocks since the first one in January 2009, is a time stamp the whole network agrees on, with no time zones, daylight saving or AM and PM. Some bitcoiners already date things that way: "see you at block 1,000,000."
@bh (short for At Block Height) is a free web tool that makes that easy. It was made by @anikmalcolm on X and lives at atblockheight.com, with its own account, @AtBlockheight. It does four things:
- Block height now: the height of the latest block.
- Date to block: pick a date and time and see which block was mined then, or roughly which block will be.
- Block to date: type a block height and see when it was mined, or roughly when it should arrive.
- Saved blocks: keep a list of named blocks, such as a birthday, an anniversary or a launch, to come back to.
Both converters work in your own time zone or a list of others around the world, and the site has light and dark themes and several languages.
A date for a future block is an estimate. Blocks arrive about every ten minutes on average, not exactly, and the difficulty adjustment only corrects the pace every 2,016 blocks. The further ahead you look, the wider the margin.
@bh is not part of parachutesBTC; we show it here because it is a good idea, well made. The box above loads the live site.
Related lessons: Blocks and the chain, The difficulty adjustment. Also on this site: BTCalendar, Bitcoin's history by date.