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

[iang]

On 24/05/2026 20:53, Ron Garret wrote:

>> On May 23, 2026, at 3:53 PM,
>> calebpayne at gmx.us
>> wrote:
>>
>> The exchange between Bill and Ron Garret cuts straight to one of the most persistent schisms in monetary economics and decentralized systems design: the distinction between **money as a stable unit of account** and **money as a neutral censorship-resistant ledger**.
>
> There is actually a higher level of abstraction which is: money as a GENERALIZED CONTRACT, specifically, a generalization of an I.O.U. where one of the parties is not an individual entity but society at large.

The whole "what is money" thing is IMO garbled by economists with their list of 3/4 features. They haven't really got the whole HasA versus IsA thing from OOP.

To cut to the chase, I think money IsAn accounting machine (system) that accounts for the relative inputs and outputs of each person.

Once one has a strong grasp of what it is (IsA) then one can discuss the features it needs (HasA) to succeed as a better money.

Then, money that is not independentally demanded (eg specie, gold & silver) will generally need a CONTRACT to ensure that the parties holding the units have a deal, so to speak.

Where we probably went wrong with money having a contract is that initially, our common notes forms of money did have a contract - on the note was printed "I promise to pay the bearer $5 in gold." Or whatever number.

That was a fine contract, but the issuer of the contract (in this case the Fed) reneged on the contract by removing the printed commitment to pay in gold. Ever since then, the leading people who educate us about the money - central banks => economists - have stopped talking as if money is or has a contract.

> The problem is that people don't think of money as a contract or an option because they've never been taught that this is what it is.

Exactly.

> They have been taught that the "time value of money" is an axiom, that compounding interest and increased purchasing power with time is a fundamental human right or somehow a consequence of the laws of physics rather than the product of productivity improvements.  As a result they see money not as a contract but an *entitlement*, and inflation as morally unacceptable *theft* rather than morally acceptable counterparty risk.  IMHO this is a catastrophic failure of our education system.

The other thing that Central Banks do is surround the topic with boring mysticism. This is a ploy to keep people away from their grip on the power of money. You see this develop in strange ways when they publish papers saying that digital money have monetary policy implications. This is their way of saying "this is our jurisidiction, leave it to us." While they over egg the pudding - a good money doesn't have much in the way of monetary policy implications - there generally aren't enough people telling them to get back in their box; it's a good trick and they employ it frequently.

> When viewed correctly as a contract, a certain level of background inflation becomes not only morally acceptable but morally necessary.  The financial obligations represented by monetary contracts must have some kind of expiration date built in.  Money has to be a "stable unit of account" in order to serve its purpose, but only on time scales on the order of one human lifetime, not across multiple generations, and certainly not forever.

Sort of - but inflation isn't the only tool. Companies that issue money-like units (eg airline miles) often build in various barriers into the contract that cause the 'money' to not last. As you point out, one obvious one is an expiry - 2 years is popular. Another is making it difficult to spend, a third is the general loss rate, and also lesser ability to convert to other forms of valuable tokens.

The general rule here should be that companies should be free to experiment with their money contract and the market will tell us what works best.

For example, if Microsoft were to issue a money, there would be no need to reserve it. The company has a solid revenue stream, and can make good on any contract from that.

(cue howls of protest, as some countries are passing laws to ban such a contract. The howls of protest are because the above is correct, and the howlers aka banks know they'll be competed out of business if such a thing were to be allowed. This is precisely what happened in the 1990s - some may recall that Bill Gates popped up one day and said Microsoft was going to issue a money. Howlers howled and Bill Gates was told no. Same thing with Zuck a few years back...)

> The question of money as a "neutral censorship-resistant ledger" is a completely different matter.

As an aside, if we present money as an accounting machine, then money as a "neutral censorship-resistant ledger" can be easily seen as an *implementation*.

> This requirement is also a *consequence* of the fact that money is a contract with society at large as one of the counterparties, and so there has to be some way of keeping track of what society's obligations are under this contract that everyone will agree on.  But that is *completely independent* of the actual agreements about future obligations that are entered into.  One of the big problems with both cryptocurrencies *and* fiat currencies is that they conflate these two functions when they really ought to be separated.  Of course, it is completely understandable why fiat currencies conflate them: controlling the record-keeping gives you power.

I would say, controlling (reneging on) the *contract* gives you power, and controlling the accounting of the unit also gives you a separate power.

But yes - hard agree - Bitcoin world doesn't so much conflate the contract with the accounting, they don't even know that contracts exist. And when they are forced to acknowledge them, they go silent and run away.

It seems there is a massive learnt aversion to contacts, so much so that even the regulators, who are often lawyers, don't understand that there is a contract.

> But crypto currencies don't eliminate this, they merely shift the locus of power away from the issuers of currency towards those who understand technology.  There isn't a government entity who can block someone from issuing a bitcoin transaction, but that doesn't mean there aren't barriers to entry.
>
> Bottom line: the crypto world is reinventing a lot of wheels because people don't understand what money actually is and how it works.  On which note...

Yes, another hard agree. Specifically on contracts: ICOs and NFTs were hard fails bc the crypto world declined to put contracts in there. Without a proper contract, that rendered them unanchored and the rug pull proceeded without limit.

Regulators could solve about 80% of their crypto world angst by just leaning into the contract aspect: SMTC should start every conversation.

(Show Me The Contract.)

> Or we could create some kind of scheme whereby people put money into accounts whose numerical value grows over time.  But wait, how could we possibly make that work?  Hm, maybe people could take the money they aren't currently using and temporarily assign it to someone else who has an idea for how to to put that money to some kind of productive use.  Then they could take some of the profit from the resulting value and use that to give the original owner of the money *more* than the amount they were temporarily assigned.  That would have exactly the effect we are looking for!  Isn't that, um, *interesting*?

:)

iang

PS: Maybe it should be SMTFC ?
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