[Cryptography] Montana: A Post-Quantum Blockchain with Time as Scarcity

[Ron Garret]

> On May 19, 2026, at 2:44 PM, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
> 
>> On May 19, 2026, at 20:01, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
>>> On May 19, 2026, at 8:05 AM, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
>>>> On May 18, 2026, at 09:12, Pierre Abbat <phma at bezitopo.org> wrote:
>>>> With  cryptocurrency, a lost coin cannot be found
>>> This kinda leads to a circular definition of “lost.”  I guess I would say that in traditional currencies, large amounts tend to go into reserves, and optimists assume that they will stay there, but when things get bad, optimistic predictions which may have held fast for long periods of time suddenly become inapplicable.  With cryptocurrencies, optimists assume that large blocks which haven’t moved in a long time are associated with lost keys, which will not be found or brute-forced.  I imagine optimistic assessments which have held true for a long time could, likewise, go out the window rather quickly if the status-quo changes.
>> 
>> The only way to actually destroy fiat currency is to destroy physical tokens.
> 
> Uh…  That’s not how things work in the world I inhabit.  In the world I inhabit, when interest rates get too high, reserve banks buy back currency to remove it from circulation, and thus, from existence.  There are no physical tokens.

A central bank removing money from circulation and destroying currency are not the same thing.  When a central bank removes money from circulation they also remove it from their balance sheet.  That doesn't happen when currency is destroyed.  As far as the central bank's accounting is concerned, destroyed currency still exists (unless they are the ones who destroyed it).  But as far as reality is concerned, it doesn't.  You can think of it as sort of the opposite or dual of counterfeiting.  If counterfeit currency enters circulation, then there is extra money that exists in reality (as long as people can't tell the currency is counterfeit) but not on the balance sheet.  You can see that this is the case by imagining a situation where $X in currency is destroyed and replaced with the exact same amount of high-quality counterfeits.  The net effect of that on the economy would be nil.

rg