How do I burn IOTA?

Question

Regardless of why I'd want to do this, I'd like to know how.

Are there any specific "burn addresses" that are reserved for this? Or is there a technique I can use to guarantee the IOTA are destroyed?

(For comparison: In Ethereum you can send ether to a special smart contract that self-destructs.)

Answer 1

There is no way to really burn IOTAs. But you can send IOTAs to an address to which nobody has the private key to:

• AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
  this address already has 5 IOTAs. They are basically destroyed now because the chances that somebody will ever find out the private key to this address are vanishingly small.

If you want to burn your IOTA for a specific reason, you could send them to an address like

• BURNING9IOTAS9BECAUSE9I9HAVE9TOO9MANY9ANYWAY9999999999999999999999999999999999999
  Everybody seraching for that address in a Tangle explorer would know that you burnt the IOTAs and for what reason you did it. (e.g. proof to ICO participants that you are not keeping their money)

Answer 2

There is no way to literally burn IOTA in such a way that the total supply is reduced. The only thing you can do is send IOTA to an inaccessible address.

You have two options:

1) Generate a seed, put it into the wallet, create an address, and send the IOTA to that address. Do not save the seed anywhere, then close. You will never be able to access these IOTA again.

2) Make up a random address. Send the IOTA to that address. There is an extremely slim chance that this address belongs to someone else, but the chances are extremely low. The IOTA will go to that address and there is no real way for someone to backwards engineer access to it.