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.
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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 :
would be pretty based if they actually succeeds
Can we get GNU Taller to all europe please
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.
What is the relationship of fiat currency to tokens? is it €1:1 token?
The tokens can be worth different amounts. There can be 1 ¢ tokens, 10 ¢ tokens, 1 € euro tokens, 10 € tokens, whatever. Your wallet app will, when withdrawing, generate various tokens worth different amounts.
Using those tokens will be somewhat like paying in cash at a store that does not return any change. You gotta pay the exact amount. In order to facilitate that, you’d withdraw tokens worth only small amounts. There wouldn’t be like be any 50 € tokens in practice. If you wanted to withdraw 50 €, you’d get 1000 1 ¢ tokens, 100 10 ¢ tokens, and the rest 1 € tokens or something like that, to make sure you always have the exact amount ready to pay for anything.
Thats not true I think. Taler is able to anonymously give “change money”. https://youtu.be/fY-DWLHVLk4?t=2380 (39:40 timestamp)
Dude, I assume my grandma has absolutely been scamed, and her birthday money is basically as valuable as Trump coins
I’m expecting that if she has been scammed and her token was stolen, you can report this token to the police and they might be able to ask the banking system in which account was this token deposited, to hopefully trace the scammer back.
If so, this looks safer than the scams that ask grandmas to get giftcard codes.
But that’s assuming that the token was obtained from grandm’s bank and not that the grandma paid a scammer in some other untraceable way to obtain a fake token from the scammer. That would be a different kind of scam.
Then you wana deposit it immediately to find out, like a seller does
iirc they did have some mechanisms to prevent token fraud but I honestly can’t remeber how it was implemented.
Great write up. Thank you.
Can you find the link from where you originally got this information?
Go on the official Taler Website, they have all the info there iirc
What happens to my funds when my phone is lost or stolen?
If you don’t have a backup then you’re likely out of luck. But that’s better than cash, where you can’t make a backup
But that’s better than cash, where you can’t make a backup
Depends on threat model, eg police will seize phones/computers/devices all the time but will only seize money if they think it’s related to a crime. As long as you’re not being arrested for a money-related charge then your cash would most likely be untouched but your devices will be lost. But of course that issue is circumvented with just off-site backups which are probably just as safe as your cash if cops aren’t interested in your cash.
If the cops steal my USB drive with my encrypted bitcoin wallet, I just restore it from the backup and they’ve stolen nothing.
In the US, cops steal cash all the time. Sometimes tbeh steal it personally, but they have an incentive to “legitimately” steal it to add it to their budget. Its fucked.
Fair, I don’t live in the US and IME cops haven’t stolen my cash, although tbf I’ve not really had cash lying around when raided or arrested.
Well thats their logic. If you have a lot of cash lying around, they immediately recognize it as an anomolu and therefore assume you’re guilty and the money is illicit.
Its completely legal to not trust banks and keep your savings in cash instead (or some ratio per your risk appetite), but cops generally don’t care about laws.
How would other types of taxes, like in you example, gift tax, be handled?
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.
It says “Payments are made after exchanging existing money into electronic money with the help of an Exchange service, that is, a payment service provider for Taler.”
Do they say anywhere who that payment service provider is? And are there options for who to use?
Its centralized you mean, and is at the whims of the creator. Like comparing a scarce asset like Pokémon card to gold
So the blockchain supporting $Trump makes it so much more trustworthy?
the blockchain supporting $Trump
wtf does that even mean
A blockchain is a ledger. They’re talking about the distributed public ledger of all the histrionic transactions of the trump shitcoin
Just because it’s built on a block chain doesn’t mean they relinquished control and decentralized it. But it’s a platform that allows you to decentralize.
Is this worth it as an upgrade to our existing centrally controlled currency? That’s a different discussion.
Does it solve the problem blockchain provides a solution for? Does it allow for decentralization? It appears the answer is no.
Does it solve the problem blockchain provides a solution for? Does it allow for decentralization? It appears the answer is no.
And we are still waiting for a problem that blockchain can fix.
If you don’t think centralized currency controlled by neo-liberal capitalist states isn’t a problem to solve, we aren’t even in the same plane here.
And you think blockchain fixes that? Lol.
Bitcoin is pretty fucking centralized right now.
It already did fix it. See OWS and wikileaks and the hong Kong protests.
All were able to get instant international donations from allies while the big banks shut down their donations (eg PayPal, swift, wechat, etc)
I’m pretty sure it was centralized currencies.
Decentralized currencies will only actually make sense when the material incentives of our economic system would benefit from them. Capitalism is literally all about concentrating the control of capital and the means by which we produce things. Sadly, decentralized currencies will never be allowed to decouple themselves from these economic systems. There is too much material power to prevent that. And by material power I mean literally the enforcement of these concentrations of wealth through the use of violence.
The tech is cool. But it doesn’t magically solve the problem by simply being invented. It’s why no one is actually paying with these cryptocurrencies on anything but an extremely small scale.
A currency that cannot be manipulated by capitalist for their benefit has no place in our world. So, it will never reach any meaningful real use until those structures are dismantled. It will just continue to be a speculative asset that rich people dump their extra wealth into and poor people play as the lottery.
Yes I agree with this completely. Ethically-minded libertarian capitalists who have convinced themselves that bitcoin will neuter the ability of the state to commit violence are either fooling themselves or haven’t bothered to step back a bit to examine the nature of power. I was just pointing out that bitcoin does provide a way for a money to be managed in a decentralized and automated fashion. That’s the actual technological novelty that a blockchain enables, and IMO that is the only novelty is can or will provide. As all money does in capitalism though, yes it will continue top concentrate and cause harm.
To your point, bitcoin is already centralized around 1% of wallets.
It’s not really decentralized when 1% of people control the value at will.
That’s like saying a HDD is bad because someone can put CP on it.
Edit: CP rhymes with “Mild Corn”.
Nah it’s a shitty tech that everyone wants to make happen. It could completely disappear and the tech world.would be no worse off in any way at all. The world could do without it’s absurd draw on resources. And yes I am aware that the large power draw from mining is mostly gone. It’s idle resource usage is sad
I think that has a premine. So its a scam
What’s their stance on porn?
That’ll be a big one. I could see tons of artists wanting to flock to a platform without risks of a ban.
And any platform that wants to allow adult content would have a viable means to secure funding. You can’t overstate how far the chilling effects of VISA et al’s anti-porn stance reaches.
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
Could this be scaled to other European countries?
Shouldn’t we gather feedback first from that experiment before scaling up?
Been waiting for Taler for ages. I’m ready now, you wait 😝
I don’t necessarily have to wait, it’s more a generic advice.
Can you please expand though, as I’m curious, why you won’t wait and you plan to use it?
Can you also comment on my follow up question, namely what are the limitations at the moment, both technically and legally? Basically does not living in Switzerland make a difference anyway for users?
It was mostly a playful comment on my part (indicated by the emoji) - I’ve waited this long so they might as well do it properly.
I would like to buy products/services online privately, “using cash” as it were. I also value software freedom and the Taler client is GPL. The API is LGPL but hopefully I can avoid using proprietary software for transactions.
I looked into setting up a method of donations on itch.io when I was focused on that hobby and the options of PayPal or Stripe just felt icky. I don’t want to use them, or encourage others to do so.
Thank you for taking the time to explain.
I watched technical talks (like this) on GNU Taler ages ago so this might be out of date but the most difficult part to me would be the banks being interested in supplying the service necessary. You get money to your browser wallet by transferring it from your bank account.
I don’t live in Switzerland and can’t imagine banks or government supporting anything but their own version that gives them control.
Thanks again, if the wallet is “filled” by a bank transfer then I imagine anything able to do so, e.g. my random European bank that allow IBAN transfer, would suffice as long as my wallet itself has an IBAN or that the service provider hosting that wallet has one and then “store” the then “money” for it and allow me to spend it with other GNU Taler wallets.
Anyway I’ll explore through a recent technical talk indeed, good suggestion.
For others who might be interested, found https://tutorials.taler.net/dev/merchant-api/introduction#video-tutorial from the merchant standpoint.
Of course. I was only curious if it could be done.
I think the answer is: we don’t know yet
Also… I’m wondering what that means in practice because if it’s online infrastructure then… it can be operating in Switzerland but both sellers and buyers, remotely or face-to-face, can rely on it to exchange money.
So… what are the limitations at the moment, both technically and legally?
At which point is this worthy to try?
I mean. Someone will have to maintain the same kind of infrastructure that visa and mastercard does. It would require a monumental amount of investment. Not to mention that it can, under no circumstances, go down during peak use.
I’m all for it.
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.
What’s their stance on heroin?
Buy all you want, sell and you’re fucked.
That’s pretty in line with Taler then
Well it probably depends on your local laws
Cool
Sounds a lot like Zelle.
Yup but Zelle is proprietary. I think an open source payment system could reduce transaction fees quite a bit.
Zelle does not have any transaction fees.
I highly doubt that. Even if you don’t pay it, someone does.
Its moving money from bank account to bank account. No fees no matter what bank you use
Zelle doesn’t charge the bank money?
Not really. Zelle seems to just be US banks implementing the payment and bank-to-bank transfer systems that other countries already have. Except, at least for Australia with our ‘Osko’ system it has the involvement of our Reserve Bank and is mandated to be supported universally, whereas Zelle is completely private. The traditional lack of that bank-to-bank transfer ability is why apps like Venmo and Cash App have been popular in the US, which I think explains why Zelle has had an app until last month, as consumers expect that, even though it’s owned by the major US banks.
Taler on the other hand seems to be “What if crypto but with fiat currency and also the recipients aren’t anonymous”.
You know most cryptocurrency reciepts are super transparent, right? The blockchain is a public ledger. There is no anonymity on non privacy coins like bitcoin
You’re right, I misspoke with the term anonymous, it’s actually pseudononymous the same as Lemmy or Reddit are. It’s not like there is a published index of names to wallet addresses.
KYC laws are basically that index, except they’re only available to companies and governments and advertises and basically anyone else who pays for it from coin analytics companies
US banks have wires and ACH. How is zelle different?
Every US bank has the ability to wire money, but there’s no easy way to do it.
That’s the point I was making. In Australia, wire transfers through your bank are free, attached to a phone number or email address (rather than account numbers), almost always instantaneous and 24/7.
Various countries have cross method payment system that actually easier, cheaper (sometimes free), and faster than Paypal, Visa, and other US provider.
For example, indian UPI or Indonesian QRIS.
Indonesian QRIS even works with other banks and mobile wallet across Southeast Asia, India, Taiwan, China, and Japan.
I didn’t read the article but based on the headline it sounds interesting. I’m just worried about adoption rate but I guess they’ve got to start somewhere
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.
The ledger being public doesn’t prevent illicit use, like darknet markets. They use mixers or onion routed payments.
In the context of this thread, the centralized exchange is Taler Operations AG.
Taler offers anonymity for consumers but not for merchants. Every transaction everywhere - including Taler - has a sender and receiver.
Sorry if this is rude, but you are spreading misinformation, not knowledge.
Excuse me but what did I write that’s misinformation? I wasn’t describing Taler, I was describing bitcoin / crypto. Nothing I said was incorrect, and I was correcting your own misinformation (Mind you it’s not your fault that you were misinformed and I don’t think you were doing so intentionally, it’s easy to pick up misinformation about unpopular subjects because people are more likely to take facts at face value).
Regarding mixers, I have a friend in US gov that says they’re not immune to targeted investigation. You can hide in them only until you catch institutional attention, wherein they have a big enough database of inputs and outputs to simply know who you are. However apparently Monero is truly a pain in their ass.
And saying “a ledger is public doesn’t protect it from illicit use” is kind of silly seeing as you can use any currency for illicit use if you want. What matters is if you can be caught, and its extremely easy to be caught doing something illicit if you do it with bitcoin as the transaction history is right there in front of the world.
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.
“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?
I think they mean one in the EU
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.
I never said I was wideminded or that EU doesn’t have problems. We do have many. But if we talk about new upcoming companies I personally rather support EU countries.
Swiss people should be happy about this. I refuse to support it, that’s it. If you think they are almost european, then why not join? Or at very least help your neighbours when they need it and don’t play the high ground when convenient.
You can’t always have it both ways.
It’s not that I don’t understand your argument, or sympathise with prioritising EU products, it’s just quite a far reach to claim that Switzerland is “not a real country”. I’d choose a Swiss company over a Hungarian one - so EU membership isn’t the only determinant.
The way forward, imo, is full EU integration - also for Switzerland - but even with Trump threatning us too this is too far a reach from happening…
So, I’ll welcome products from any European country that generally cares about data protection, neutrality, and a non-American future.
It’s okay, I rarely have sympathetic takes tbh. Some years ago I would have totally agreed with you but not anymore.
Reality taught us that you don’t cave with bullies and the ONLY appropriate response to intolerance is intolerance. Swiss government and people (just like in the UK) gave EU the middle finger. The appropriate response should be to sanction them to oblivion. They want to be independent? Let them be, fully tho.
If we keep excusing terrible people, we will eventually end up in a terrible position.
