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 I used to run a monero node. I always thought the monero blockchain was encrypted, so every transaction is confidential and there‘s no way to verify the total number of monero UTXOs 🤔 
 You are talking about a different thing 🧐 
 Sorry, I am a monero noob, just being curious. But this is what’s written on their homepage too…

My understanding was that, like in Liquid, Monero transactions are encrypted. Of course you know how much monero you have mined yourself or sent/received in total, but the blockchain consisting of fully encrypted transactions, while being fully anonymous, is not verifiable in terms of total supply.

What am I missing? 
 Monero blockchain contains information about all transactions and the creation of new XMR through mining. By accessing a Monero node or using a blockchain explorer, you can calculate the total amount of XMR mined by summing up the block rewards since the genesis block.
 
 But how are the transactions anonymous then? 
 nostr:nevent1qqsdcy7l9hjrakwv0xtdev7c79neh0dv0wadetuvpektxg6a36t5nzcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzqrtuaj57qq88z83x80q55gsk4d6fdz57jqlt5g22w9pspt0duk3qqvzqqqqqqyhh8z4k 
 Amounts are briefly transparent when they are first mined. After that amounts are hidden like normal. 
 Yes, it is encrypted. When you run a Monero node it's using 'pedersen commitments' to validate that all inputs/outputs for every transaction on the blockchain "cancel out" (no Monero is being created from thin air) but without knowing the actual values for any specific transaction.

https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/pedersen-commitment.html 
 Another cool thing about pedersen commitments is that they are "perfectly hiding" meaning it's impossible to break it's privacy even for a quantum computer

"Perfectly binding or hiding means that even with infinite computing power it would be impossible to break the property (bindingness/hidingness)."

https://docs.grin.mw/wiki/miscellaneous/switch-commitments/#properties-of-commitment-schemes