GNU Taler is a Free Software payment system that preserves the privacy of payers while ensuring that income is visible to authorities.
I have seen 0 articles relating GNU Taler with the digital Euro, and I am very worried this incredible project will end nowhere. Because the digital Euro is definitely coming and that would be the moment to put Taler to work.
As a french citizen, i reeeeeaaaaaally hope the digital euro will be good, and truly as flexible as cash
It won’t be great if non-libre payment systems are still the rule.
Taler has a completely different application. Digital euro won’t use it
Could you expand?
AFAIK Taler is for payments, the Digital Euro is for storing value.
Yes, but also, your Taler wallet stores value too, I guess.
In any case, I wonder why Taler has not made it a point that they are (or could) be a payment system for the digital euro.
If it’s not going to be used for that, it could still be used as a good paypal alternative.
Wow that sounds like a terrible product no one would want, who is the target audience for such a thing?
Target audience: People who want to pay for stuff anonymously through the Internet. It’s a large and underserved market.
It’s a big part of why people got so excited about bitcoin, and why it was so disappointing when it spectacularly failed to be any good at that application.
It doesnt sound very anonymous. If the info is “visable to authorities” then its not very private.
Paypal and most other services already allow for payments to be “private” but visable to authorities.
People who actually want private and anoymous payments already use crypto.
Taler ensures asymmetric privacy. The buyer does not expose their identity to the seller (or the government), nor what they bought to their bank/payment-provider. But the seller needs to expose their income for tax purposes. This is a good compromise as it follows existing law and prevents tax-evasion and (to some extend) money laundering.
Taler does use crypto, aka cryptography, to make sending payments securely anonymous. That is the main point of it.
The same audience as Paypal, which seems to be reasonably popular. Except this is privacy preserving and an open standard that many providers can use.
Due to the fact that Taler is designed for government to see all income means it’s not an option. Is there any privately owned company anywhere in the world that uses Taler?
Given government’s attitude that all money everywhere belong’s to the government, they only decide on how much to let the worthless servants get to use, I’m good with tax evasion. When I carry cash at stores, it’s fine if they don’t report the income. Government is very good at taking money by force, but not as interested to pay for anything. It is in store’s best interest to accept privacy coins like Monero or Zcash before using something like Taler
It’s an objective improvement over EMV which doesn’t protect privacy at all.
Taler protect payer privacy while exposing income information. Meaning it can help collect taxes to pay for infrastructure, education, public service, …
That’s a fine compromise. I hope Taler become a practical alternative to EMV and other shitty payment systems being pushed by banks.
Stores should accept monero to eliminate paying taxes
Nah, I think paying Monero in the physical world is much like paying cash by mail for digital services - awesome but impractical. Why not use the right tools for each job? Better stick to Monero for the digital world and cash in the physical one.
Who is the Payment Service Provider?
I can’t tell if this is decentralised.
It can be many different ones. Usually your home bank would allow you to exchange some Euro into Taler tokens and then use those to pay in compatible stores. But instead of a centralized system there can be many different exchanges that follow the same standard (protocol) and can be used with the same software and wallet apps.
I’ll stick with monero.
Don’t view keys in Monero “expose information to the authorities” if used in such a way? Hard to see the need for a system where tokens can “expire” when we already have a perfectly good one where they don’t.
