GNU Taler (a swiss FLOSS alternative to Visa, Mastercard and Paypal) begins operating in Switzerland as Version 1.0 releases
GNU Taler (a swiss FLOSS alternative to Visa, Mastercard and Paypal) begins operating in Switzerland as Version 1.0 releases
GNU Taler, the privacy-preserving digital payment system, is now Swiss ready.
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.
It must be about ten years that Taler has stood unopposed as a proposed system for digital payments that's pretty good and might actually happen. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else that exists. It's been a lot of years of tests, audits, experiments, and demos that occasionally turn up in my news feed — it was beginning to look like vapourware. I guess it'll be another several years before it gets to my part of the world, but it's good to see it finally getting started.
I hope this takes off. MasterVisa censors pornographic stuff, denying payment services for people who don't normalize their creations. On top of that, MasterVisa will likely become collaborators of the Trump Regime, tracking payments of anti-trump folks, denying service to clinics that provide healthcare to women and minorities, ect.
Privacy is extremely important for the safety and liberty of people.
There's something I'm really struggling to understand when talking about things like Taler, and the "Digital euro" idea which has come up recently as well: What is it actually doing that's new?
Money is distributed digitally already. When you get a paycheck, no-one is actually moving physical paper and metal cash from a business account bank vault to a customer account bank vault, it's just numbers in a spreadsheet. So what's actually new when we're talking about digital currency like this post?
There must be something I'm missing here.
Current Platforms are private businesses. Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, they're all private businesses that can do whatever they want. This means that 1 They all charge a lot of money (I think 1-5% of the purchase) 2.1 since they're all american the new Führer can turn off digital payments for a Business or even an entire Country he doesn't like. And the way he uses every single leverage he can get to get others agree to his terms, this seems realistic. 2.2 since they're private businesses with a quasi-monopoly on digital payments, they can threaten our economies if we try to do something they don't like, say raising taxes on them or limiting how much they can charge. A Taler by the national bank would be completely sovereign and make us independent from the US and its companies.
The Taler also has the advantage that the buyer is anonymous. So if you want to buy a Dildo without the seller, the bank, the government or even your family knowing, you can. If you delete the payment from your history then there is no proof at all that that payment came from you (well, your shipping address is on the package, but that's not something the Taler can solve lol). However, different from other crypto currencies, the seller is NOT anonymous, which prevents tax evasion.
Hope that cleared it up?
Yes, this helps, thanks.
I already understood the need to avoid private money agents like Paypal, visa, etc. In the UK we have the BACS and FPS systems that allow for direct free money transfer. Though they should be more usable for day to day transactions, they work well enough if you need to send a significant amount of money between bank accounts.
Your explanation of the anonymity seems like the real value add of these digital currencies. The fact this only applies to the buyer and not the seller is a good choice, and definitely wins over blockchain crypto. Looking at it more closely, the fact they use signed tokens rather than proof-of-x is also a very good choice.
I will need to read up on Taler's docs more closely. But looking at the summary of features on their site something hits me as an immediate problem - you need to "load up" a wallet. If Jane Doe wants to buy a coffee, it's far easier to just use a bank card (which may interface through a private money agent like visa, or a middleman like google/apple). Loading up private wallets isn't a difficult concept (it's how gift cards work), but it does add extra steps of friction that I think will need to be removed before this can really be taken up by the general public.
It may harm the anonymity aspect, but I think that to get people using it a system that could operate like a tap-once-and-done bank card payment, loading up a wallet for immediate spend seems like the best solution. It would also help alleviate any fears that typically are associated with blockchain based digital currency - primarily of losing the signed digital money as it sits in a wallet out with the bank account's protections. And once the system is normalised and people are used to it, then all the architecture is there for anyone that really needs the anonymity.
Two of the things that I think are new vs the current system are:
Wallet: anonymous holding of currency without a custodian. You can't hold fiat currency digitally today without a bank or other entity providing that service.
Transfer: moving fiat currency anonymously and under your own direction without intermediaries. You can't make a digital payment or transfer in pure fiat currency today without that custodian providing the service (often through fee-based payment network). As a result, your identity is known when that transaction happens.
This.
A legit offline digital currency transfer akin to how one uses cash.
And ofc a giant body regulating it with proper audits, directives, delegated acts, etc.
Additionally this opens up the possibility of a modern personal existence without banks (ie private companies). We are now basically forced to use banks + (USA) monies transfer systems.
Disclaimer: Not an expert on this.
It was previously not really possible to send money digitally directly, except in the form of cyptocurrency. It always goes through banks or intermediaries. If you transfer money between bank accounts, the banks have to talk to each other to do so, and the "real" transfer happens between their central bank accounts at a later point in time. There is indeed only spreadsheets with numbers going up and down. Effectively the banks are in control of all of it. In most cases we don't want a slow bank transfer but some sort of user-friendly payment portal like PayPal or wero, which the banks also need to have contracts with (or, operate themselves).
My vague understanding here is that this process is completely detached from banks, and that you are thus transferring actual money. It's not just numbers in a spreadsheet going up and down.
If anybody understands it better please correct anything I got wrong.
@PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
You get this right I would say.
You need to install an electronic wallet on your device and add the fiat money amount to the wallet's balance (so Taler itself s not a currency).
There's a demo on the website for those interested (you need to download a wallet): https://www.taler.net/en
Taler provides digital cash as in anonymous transactions for the buyer. Neither the bank nor the state knows who you pay or for what.
However, the merchant can't hide that they are making money, thus enabling taxation and prevention of money laundering. That way it's even better than cash.
It's not based on blockchains and proof of work and thus doesn't have the ridiculous energy waste problems.
It's really quite good.
A lot of good replies here, but one thing that Taler doesn't do and credit cards do is...credit. This can be solved by having a line of credit at your bank and using Taler over that, which may actually be cheaper, as well.
As a non-European, I hope this spreads.
That's kinda cool news. Hope it grows to be an alternative to these american systems.
*USAian
You a Saiyan
US-American we say in Switzerland
Not sure what this means but European alternatives to us American megacorps are usually good.
Did you mean the European central bank in Frankfurt? Because I don't think Europe has a national bank, not yet being a nation and all that.
Did you mean the European central bank in Frankfurt
ups, my mistake ;P
It aims to be as privacy preserving as cash for the buyer while not allowing the seller to evade taxes.
So I could buy a VPN with it and then order some Swedish porn (edit: life streams), and no authority would be able to track me down?
Basically yes, but the seller needs to register a business account with a Swedish Taler bank exchange, and if that bank figures out that the seller is breaking Swedish law they can terminate that account.
afaik you don't even need a VPN because communication happens through gnunet, which is somewhat like I2P and Tor
The ECB also wants to introduce a digital Euro. I wonder how exchanging my digital Euros to digital Swiss Francs and vise versa would work. Currently with physical cash you need to exchange your money at an intermediary. But with digital coins it’s surely possible for the national bank to handle this.
If you ever paid with your card in a non-Euro country, you already did something like that.
Revolut will on the fly convert between your currencies.
Cyberpunk is now, old man.
It is very easy lol but it's likely Mastercard/Visa doing the conversion (taking ~ 0.5% each time), exactly what we want to avoid :P
That is still a corporate intermediary who does the conversion young man. And they are converting your digital money that is stored at the corporate private bank.
Digital currency is going to be the equivalent of cash. Digital money that is stored on your phone and is minted by the national bank like cash. Not the same as your money at the bank.
Last time i checked, users had to exchange their funds on cendral exchanges. The funds you got from exchange A can not be used on exchange B. So from my understanding, it's like you needed to use the same bank to interact (not just the same currency). How can this even be considered for adoption?
The Idea is that the central banks adopt them.
The same way there is obly one Euro and you can only get it from the central bank, there will only be one Euro-Taler from the european central bank, one Frank-Taler from the swiss national bank etc
The european central bank does not run an exchange at the moment. That means that all the other european banks and all european Taller users will need to switch eventually?
And what about transactions in foreign currencies? I guess we would need a central private party for that, similar to visa.
When the alternative is using digital payment methods from a fascist country?
A bunch of not-ideal products are about to get adopted by other countries and then are about to gain all of the features that the U.S. monopolies always fought against.
someone quickly send me € 10 Mil. I wanna see if it’s working 😆
sure
taler://pay-push/exchange.demo.taler.net/7VJWX736EABRDZ4X84B29QM6M1CZV6CTKQGSX3X57FAG03PZQ8S0
It is working (I didn't hit Receive so they can get it). Here's about tree fiddy for you neons
it worked, ty! 🙌
Hi androidul here are 10 Kudos for you to get you started (lacking the Mil.€ at the moment 😄)
Awesome!
taler://pay-push/exchange.demo.taler.net/ZXHDJF9DHN97DBZCR8CABC838ZHR3C6M55JRCR9M00GZM5SEZ9EG
For whoever is testing taler
Not sure about the anonymity is good or not: why is that necessary? Current bank systems are already anonymous
Uhh no the fuck they're not?
Could you explain how the current banking system is anonymous?
While is disagree with the harsh tone of u/als@lemmy.blahaj.zone and u/altro_city@fedia.io here, The current banking systems are not anonymous. Anonymity is important to protect our privacy, to prevent us being manipulated and, in the worst case, to protect our security.
Imagine something like the US. A ultra-conservative government gets to power and decides that anyone that has ever bought a Dildo is a threat to children and needs to be put on a watchlist. The GNU Taler prevents that by hiding that you ever bought a Dildo.
The GNU Taler also has the advantage of not being 100% private. While the buyer is, in fact, completely private, the seller is not. This protects the buyer, as noone can see who bought something or prove a specific person bought anything, but still prevents the seller (the one receiving money) from evading taxes, as the government can clearly see that he received money, even if it doesn't know from whom.
The GNU Taler aims to be a perfect balance of the advantages of cash and digital payments and it manages to do so pretty well in my opinion.
The GNU Taler prevents that by hiding that you ever bought a Dildo.
I mean, not really right? The government can still ask the webshop, that probably took your name and address. Or the PSP that facilitated the transaction, they likely know too. It's not like Visa/MasterCard/banks are the only parties that know it now, and the others are usually also beholden to laws that let government agencies query things.
No, the current system isn't anonymous at all. It's the exact opposite.