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

[alejandromontana at tutamail.com]

20 мая 2026 г., 00:36 От woody at pch.net:

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>> On May 19, 2026, at 20:40, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
>> This is the fundamental problem with all extant cryptocurrencies: they all control the money supply algorithmically.  But money is a commodity like any other, except that to serve its intended function as a medium of exchange it has to have a stable price relative to some actual goods or services.  The only way to accomplish that is to control the money supply in such a way that it can respond to actual demand, which is to say, to actual economic activity.  But there is no extant crypto currency with a mechanism for this.  They all control the money supply algorithmically, which inevitably leads to disconnects between supply and economic activity
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> I always thought a rational cryptocurrency would utilize mandatory recording of transactions to a blockchain to determine how much demand there was for new currency relative to the existing amount of currency in circulation, and mint additional currency as-needed to ensure that the currency supply stayed stable relative to demand, and inflation remained a predictable constant.  Of course, that also requires buy-back in the event that a currency declines in popularity, which means it needs to be an actual governmental currency, since just-regular-folks are unlikely to maintain a reserve for buy-backs, or to do the necessary, as it were.
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> Anyway, yes, it does seem like the maturation of cryptocurrencies into actual usable currencies requires this evolutionary step.
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>  -Bill
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Dear Bill

No argument from me, and I think you put your finger on the real crux. If you want a crypto that works as a stable usable currency, that is the step, and the buy-back is exactly where it gets hard. Regular folks won’t hold a reserve or do the necessary when the currency falls out of favor, so something that stable ends up run by a government or some accountable institution with a balance sheet. I agree.

The one place I’d put it differently is that this is an argument about becoming a currency, not an argument that every chain has to take that step. There are two different jobs here. One is being a stable unit of account, which needs the accountable issuer with a reserve that you describe. The other is being a neutral settlement and ordering layer, which can’t be that issuer and shouldn’t pretend to be. Montana picks the second one on purpose.

And those two look like complements to me, not the same thing growing a treasury. A neutral, fee-free, post-quantum rail is actually a decent substrate for the currency you’re describing. A government could issue a demand-responsive currency as an instrument on top, hold its own reserve, run its own buy-back, and use the chain only for ordering and settlement. So I don’t see Montana turning into that currency. I see it as the rail that kind of currency could run on.
So we agree on where usable currency has to go. I’d just put it one layer up from the protocol, not inside it.

- Alejandro


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