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.
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?
Its centralized you mean, and is at the whims of the creator. Like comparing a scarce asset like Pokémon card to gold
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.
Can you find the link from where you originally got this information?
iirc they did have some mechanisms to prevent token fraud but I honestly can’t remeber how it was implemented.
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.
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.
Thing is, most money is already digitised and tracked. Taler has the genius of giving (hopefully) enough accountability on the receiving end to satisfy tax and counter-fraud, whilst at the same time giving privacy and anonymity to the spender.
You say that as if the majority of currency transactions worldwide weren’t already digital.
Yeah, but at least those are handled by capitalist overlords instead of government overlords. I hear capitalist boot tastes better
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 😝
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?
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.
Cool
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
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.
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”.
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.
