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

[zeb at qtt.se]

-----Original Message-----
From: cryptography <cryptography-bounces+zeb=qtt.se at metzdowd.com> On Behalf Of Ron Garret
Sent: Tuesday, 19 May 2026 21:02
To: Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net>
Cc: cryptography at metzdowd.com; Pierre Abbat <phma at bezitopo.org>
Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Montana: A Post-Quantum Blockchain with Time as Scarcity


> 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.

There is one big difference: the only way to actually destroy fiat currency is to destroy physical tokens, and those scale *physically* with the amount of money they represent.  It is actually quite hard to lose a million dollars.  I'd be surprised if it has ever happened.

By way of very stark contrast, crypto keys do not scale physically with the amount of money they represent.  Keys representing a significant fraction of the world economy can be stored in a device literally the size of your little finger.  It is really easy to lose a Ledger Nano S PLus.

Also, in practice, the requirement to keep keys secret mitigates against backing them up unencrypted, and so losing access to keys can happen if someone simply forgets the pass phrase used to encrypt them, which can also happen very easily.

rg

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I general, if you've got your own disk encrypted servers with encrypted backup, is it feasible to not use a Ledger Nano S PLus, but instead simply rely on your (Windows) server security, running Bitcoin Core with un-encrypted wallets? Asking for a friend.