GNU Taler begins operating in Switzerland, distributed by the Taler Operations AG. Gnu Taler aims to be a “digital wallet” and has been used by the swiss national bank as well as the european national bank as a example for how a digital currency handed out by the state could work. It aims to be as privacy preserving as cash for the buyer while not allowing the seller to evade taxes.
Currently the Taler is brought out by a special organisation, the “Taler Operations AG”, and not the national bank, although both the national bank as well as the Taler Team have shown interest in a official digial currency by the national bank based on the Taler. But we need to relativate as the national council has stated that the introduction of a digital currency would probably take relatively major legislative changes and therefore take a bit of time.
I warmly recommend anybody who didn’t use GNU Taler yet to do so right now, for free, in minutes :
GNU Taler provides a well done demonstration https://demo.taler.net/ that one can try right here in the browser, going from a virtual bank to their wallet and buying items in “KUDOS”. It does address quite a few points raised in different discussions here.
And here is transfer from my Web based wallet to my mobile wallet, again with the testing currency :
I looked at this a looong time ago, but the basic idea is that the tokens (equivalent to cash coins/banknotes) are generated on the end user’s device, through some public-key cryptographic back-and-forth protocol. The issuer (bank/central bank/payment provider) does not see these tokens (they’re only on the end users device), but can verify that they’re legit (i.e. issued by them) somehow.
You can take one of these tokens to them, and deposit it in an account. They won’t know who it’s from but they know it was legitimately issued by them. Depositing a token is also supposed to be the only way of figuring out if it is a legit token, the bank will not tell you if a token is legit unless you deposit it.
When someone pays with these tokens in a shop, the shop will want to immediately (during checkout) deposit them, to make sure they’re legit, and also to make sure the token hasn’t been double spent. A shop that doesn’t do that makes itself vulnerable to fraud. This means shops will have a hard time hiding their revenue (to dodge taxes) compared to cash.
If someone you trust gives you a token (birthday money from your grandma, say), you don’t have to immediately deposit said token, since presumably you trust your grandma to not give you fake or double-spent tokens. Since you trust you grandma, there is no need to deposit the token and involve the bank, and that transfer would be untraceable (it’s literally just copying a number from her phone to yours).
The idea is that shop owners would have a hard time dodging taxes without opening themselves up to fraudsters using fake tokens, while the customer cannot be identified. You’d also be able to exchange tokens with family and friends in a way that isn’t traceable, as long as you trust them to not screw you over.
LETS GO!?!?!?!? I have been waiting for taler to be usable for ages now. I doubt it will ever come to canada, but hey, small wins are small wins.
Bitcoin?
Bitcoin allows the seller to evade taxes, lacks a central exchange, and has no distinction between Merchants and Consumers.
I’m not interested in defending bitcoin, but that is mostly misinformation. If you want to truly condemn bitcoin you should target it’s actual harm, the fact that it’s accelerated low-friction financialization of capitalist money, so therefore immiserates the working class faster than fiat. Come at it with the good old Marxist critiques of capital, because that’s all it really is. If you argue against it with flimsy falsifiable claims like you just did, a true believer will make you look like a fool.
I’m not condemning Bitcoin. I prefer to make falsifiable claims over unfalsifiable claims. Which claim(s) are incorrect?
The first claim is the most incorrect, as bitcoin is a single permanent public ledger where all transactions are verifiable by anyone, and on/off ramps are almost 100% regulated. I would argue that it’s actually the hardest currency with which to evade taxes, though in the early days where onramps didn’t do KYC and government wasn’t as aware of it, that would have been more true. Physical fiat or Monero (A crypto that anonymizes sender and receiver) are probably the easiest currencies with which to avoid taxes.
The third claim is conditionally incorrect. Bitcoin transactions all have a clear sender and receiver party. Though I figure maybe you refer to some kind of regulatory tax assignment, in which case that would happen outside of the protocol and is up to the local government to decide.
The second claim is just kind of … Hard to parse? I’m not sure what you mean by centralized exchanges. Exchanges of any type are almost always private entities that are themselves a centralized organization, and most currency exchanges process both fiat and crypto. Guessing I just need more context for this one.
Anyway, hopefully that had some new knowledge.
What’s their stance on porn?
It seems sellers can host their own payment receipt service and the verfication comes from cryptographically signing the money when it’s issued from issuers
I rarely wish for an opensource project to fail, but Taler is an exception. Offering a digital currency system for the government to use is like sending an efficiency improvement proposal to Auschwitz.
most tactful .world user
You might actually like Taler, it’s fundamentally different from blockchain based systems, to the point of being a cryptocurrency only in the technical sense, but not having any of the properties people associate with that word culturally.
Taler doesn’t use any kind of proof of work, and so doesn’t consume excess power or other resources, at least not more than, like, visiting any normal webpage. It’s also not decentralized, and only partially anonymous, so I can acquire money anonymously and no one can trace the money I got to a particular spend, but the only place I can reasonably spend it has to be registered to the centralized issuer and is firmly not anonymous. And the only things they can do with the tokens they receive is redeem them, which means there’s no place for tax evasion because the issuing authority can track every dollar the registered vendors redeem with them. And you can’t really transfer money from random person to person, so there’s no black market opportunity, etc.
So basically the only thing Taler “protects” is that the buyer’s identity can be anonymous, but any vendor accepting Taler must not be and are highly trackable.
These are things I actually don’t like about Taler, but we may be on opposite sides of a few issues, which is fair.
You’ve pretty accurately described everything that’s wrong with it.
You say that as if the majority of currency transactions worldwide weren’t already digital.
Physical or digital does not really matter. Gving such a powerful tool to a central bank seems too dangerous. If implemented, it’s not really a question of IF it’s going to be abused, but WHEN it’s going to be abused.
The digital currencies were supposed to give more power to the people, but the Taler is working in the oposite direction.
- Governments have controlled money for millennia, and governments’ central banks have for over a century. There’s nothing new going on there.
- You’re conflating digital currency and cryptocurrency. All cryptocurrencies are digital, but not all digital currencies are crypto.
“Based in Switzerland.”
I rather support a real European country and not a made up one.
All countries are “made up”… modern Italy was fully unified in 1870 and Germany in 1871.
What is a real European country in your opinion?
Switzerland always benefited from being a secure and reliable country thanks to his position in central EU and his cowardice in modern conflicts.
If you are known to be neutral, then accept people will treat you with indifference. Join the EU, abide by its law (especially the fiscal ones) then you will have my support.
Until this happens I rather support Italian or German companies who pay taxes to the EU community.
That adds a bit more context to your stance, although it’s quite narrowminded imo.
Europe is filled with tax havens from Monaco to Andorra to Ireland to the Netherlands to Luxembourg, and British overseas territories. It’s not only a Swiss sport to have unfair tax systems. Other current EU members have traditionally been neutral such as Sweden, Finland (although forced), Austria etc…
Then talking about “taxes to the EU community” and mentioning Germany in a reality where German fiscal policies have dictated those of most everyone else - until they now decide it benefits them to change their own - German policies towards Russian energy, Meloni’s flirtation with dictators and fascism, Spanish friendship with China, and increasing anti-EU and anti-Ukraine sentiment in most countries.
Now tell me why I should have a particularly hard stance on Switzerland? Choosing EU companies first is completely fair, but don’t justify it with some holier-than-thou attitude.
How different is this from Indian systems like PayTM or PhonePe ? functionally.
UPI is basically a way to sent money from bank account to bank account. Privacy is no where in UPI system.
Digital currency without “blockchain”, say it ain’t so! This is why I think it might actually work. It’s not based on some kind of Rube Goldberg experiment to run the world power into nothingness.
Is Taler decentralized?
Customers will use traditional money transfers to send money to a digital Exchange and in return receive (anonymized) digital cash. Customers can use this digital cash to anonymously pay Merchants. Merchants can redeem the digital cash for traditional money at the digital Exchange. As Merchants are not anonymous, they can be taxed, enabling income or sales taxes to be withheld by the state while providing anonymity for Customers.
The digital exchange seems to be centralised.
This is even worse that the current system as it essentially means flat tax regardless of your income. This means a poor person is paying the same income tax through purchasing items at a store who will be on the hook for the taxes so naturally will pass on to you and at the same time a rich person will pay the same price and tax. Further since it is centralized all the same issues of corruption and exploitation exist even if the intent today is good.
Homie you just described sales taxes which are already a thing
as a contractor if the state could just transparently handle my sales tax that would greatly simplify my life/business/tax and greatly reduce the fear that im fucking it up somehow.
The approach to taxing isn’t determined by this tool, but by the government. What this tool tries to prevent is hidden money exchanges, which affect both methods of taxing, not only flat taxes but also income-based taxes (since a hidden sale is giving the seller a hidden income and potentially placing them at a lower income tax class).
Somewhat
What is decentralized?
Your currency is stored locally on your device and transferred directly to the merchant when transacting. The marchant software can also be selfhosted. It just has to communicate with with the centralized exchange for deposit into traditional bank accounts.
What’s their stance on heroin?
Buy all you want, sell and you’re fucked.
