What do the timestamps prove, and what do they not?
Three anchors are checkable today, and none of them makes an unproven claim true. A source record dated 8 December 2024 at 02:45:18 UTC, 2,157,222 bytes, SHA-256 beginning f0d1f38f; receipts freezing those bytes from 6 August 2026; and a printed book of 2 January 2026 no party can edit.
A claim and a receipt are two different objects, and this is the second kind. The source record carries a visible Gmail origination field of 02:45:18 UTC on 8 December 2024, a file size of 2,157,222 bytes and a whole-file SHA-256 beginning f0d1f38f. Its sender-domain DKIM and the paired Google ARC mathematics were reproduced locally against the keys returned at the signed selectors on 2 August 2026, and the ARC selector belongs to Google rather than to the author.
Then the limits, stated by the record itself rather than by a critic. This is not RFC 3161 trusted timestamping. It does not prove the historical state of the naming system. It does not prove authorship, originality, public disclosure on the signed date, or scientific validity. The timestamp receipts in Bitcoin block 961,340 freeze the bytes from 6 August 2026 onward, and they back-date nothing.
So why fix a date at all. Because a dated record can be checked against what happened next in either direction, and the misses are then as checkable as the hits. Of ten dated predictions, none is graded fulfilled, one failed and was retracted, and one is graded convergent timing only. A register that could only score in its own favour would not be worth reading.
The printed book is the anchor nobody has to trust. Infinite Architects was published on 2 January 2026, 468 pages, ISBN 978-1806056200, and no party can edit a printed edition after the fact.