[HN Gopher] EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online pa...
___________________________________________________________________
EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the
Eurozone
Author : pabs3
Score : 121 points
Date : 2024-01-18 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taler.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (taler.net)
| some-username wrote:
| People should know that
|
| 1. it's not based on any kind of blockchain,
|
| 2. it's not a currency, it's a payment system which you could use
| to transfer other currencies (euro, dollar, ...) and
|
| 3. unlike most blockchain-based currencies it offers anonymity
| (only for buyers, not for sellers, though)
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Indeed, GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain
| cannot actually implement digital cash. In a blockchain,
| transactions are necessarily _centralized_ -- on a distributed
| ledger maintained using a peer-to-peer protocol, but the
| transactions themselves are still _account-based_ --, so they
| are effectively equivalent to wire transfers, i.e., just
| accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline
| parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-
| based digital "money" (quotes because there is no such thing,
| "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities and that's
| it) need to be at the same time the currency, the long-term
| storage, and the transaction system.
|
| On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system as you
| said, and uses advanced cryptography (double blind signatures)
| and infrastructure that allow it to be _bearer-based_ , i.e.,
| actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties
| can take place. Taler can actually do digital cash, with buyers
| privacy, and auditability and taxability of sellers.
| jgilias wrote:
| I'm confused. Why do they say in their FAQ that peer-to-peer
| payments only appear as such, and actually need to go through
| a payment provider?
|
| https://taler.net/en/faq.html
| t_mann wrote:
| My understanding is that a Taler is a "use-once" note - you
| create it from a payment provider balance, then you can
| transfer it to someone else, but then that person then has
| to redeem the coupon, they can't transfer it again (at
| least not using the cryptographically secure protocol -
| they could give someone else the private key, but clearly
| that wouldn't be safe). So transactions in Taler look
| something like this: 1 convert payment provider balance to
| Taler note 2 send Taler note to someone else 3 recipient
| converts receipt back to payment provider balance 4 create
| a new Taler note (go to 1). The anonymity should derive
| from the fact that the receipt note can't be traced back to
| the original spendable note, and the time delay between the
| creation of the spendable note and the redemption of the
| receipt note (so arguably the system requires some level of
| minimum activity to achieve a practical privacy guarantee).
|
| So in that sense it is quite different from the account or
| UTXO logic that most cryptocurrencies use, where balances
| can be transferred between accounts indefinitely. I think
| it's interesting to think about what problems it solves -
| it semi-solves anonymity in a way that might be acceptable
| for lawmakers and that doesn't require a backdoor (the more
| typical approach for 'compliant privacy'). The question is
| whether that is enough utility gain for regular users to
| justify the overhead - it seems like a simple transaction
| requires quite a lot of steps, key management is a non-
| trivial burden (for users who might not even be used to
| password managers eg),...
| pyrale wrote:
| > actually decentralized transactions between two offline
| parties can take place.
|
| The schema they use to explain the system's mechanisms
| clearly shows an exchange that needs to be audited:
|
| > 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.
|
| That is, the transaction _can_ be offline, but it eventually
| needs to pass through a central point to be effective.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > In a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized
| -- on a distributed ledger
|
| This.
| crotchfire wrote:
| 4. the central bank gets to decide how much "cash" each
| individual deserves to have at any given point in time. All of
| the proposals I've heard set that limit at less than one
| month's apartment rent in most EU cities. Therefore, this
| scheme is not competing with any form of money or payment
| besides coins-and-banknotes.
|
| 5. this "cash" has an expiration date, which is chosen at the
| whim of the central bank. If you stuff it in your mattress like
| paper cash, it becomes worthless. Therefore, this scheme is a
| massive step backwards in terms of central bank control over
| our lives, relative to coins-and-banknotes.
|
| If this takes off, it will affect only a small slice of our
| economic relations, and it will affect that slice for the
| worse, not for the better.
|
| I'm disappointed that Tanja Lange was willing to associate
| herself with this.
| asgeirn wrote:
| This is exactly how the physical representation of money
| works as well.
|
| The central bank controls how many bills are in circulation,
| and the central bank regularly expires old bills and coins.
| crotchfire wrote:
| Only unstable third-world countries do that.
|
| The Bank of England honors all of its old banknotes: "There
| is no deadline to exchange old banknotes with the Bank of
| England."
| https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/exchanging-old-
| ban...
|
| The United States has never demonetized any of its coins or
| banknotes. All of them are honored _and are in fact still
| legal tender_ to this day -- even the $100,000 bill! https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_denominations_of_Unit...
|
| Although Canada has revoked legal tender status for some of
| its older bills, "The Bank of Canada continues to honor
| them at face value"
| https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/about-legal-tender/
| Yoric wrote:
| In contrast, all of Europe has demonetized its old
| currencies (Deutschmark, French Francs, Italian Lira,
| etc.) when switching to Euros, and a few times before
| that. I've just looked it up and one Napoleon Franc is
| currently worth ~20EUR.
|
| So, it's not that uncommon.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| You can still convert old DM into Euros at the initial
| rate in Germany
| (https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgaben/bargeld/dm-
| banknoten-u....)
| mrighele wrote:
| The majority of EU member set a limit date: https://www.e
| cb.europa.eu/euro/exchange/html/index.en.html
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I don't think the majority in that list has set a limit
| for bills, only for coins
| mrighele wrote:
| Uhm, i guess you are right. (9 vs 11). Sorry I guess I
| didn't pay enough attention.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| No worries, you were right that a majority put time
| limits on at least some exchanges into Euro.
| anhner wrote:
| Europe is an unstable third world country, haven't you
| heard?
| t_mann wrote:
| You're confusing Taler with central bank digital currencies
| (CBDCs, the Eurozone incarnation of which would be the
| Digital Euro). I suppose the project being funded through an
| EU grant could mean that it's in consideration to be used for
| the Digital Euro, but your criticism would apply
| independently of whether Taler or another technology is used,
| and Taler could also be used in different contexts without
| those limitations. The CBDC and Taler concepts live in
| different spheres, and it doesn't make sense to criticize
| Taler for pain points that you have with CBDCs.
|
| Btw, I haven't seen anything like an expiration date in the
| proposals for the Digital Euro [0], could you provide your
| sources for that claim?
|
| [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-
| an-ec...
| crotchfire wrote:
| No, I'm not confusing anything. I think you're trying
| distract from the incredibly antisocial effects this
| project will have. Everything I wrote comes from the
| position paper published on the Taler project's website:
|
| https://taler.net/papers/cbdc2021en.pdf
|
| Page 16: _These denomination keys, and thus the coins,
| would have an expiration date before which they must be
| spent or exchanged for new coins. Customers would be given
| a certain amount of time during which they could exchange
| their coins._
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Paper and coin money _also_ gets expired and you need to
| replace your mattress stuffing for the new versions every
| now and if you want to keep any value.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > 4. the central bank gets to decide how much "cash" each
| individual deserves to have at any given point in time.
|
| Taler is a payment system, it has nothing to do with central
| banks at all.
|
| > 5. this "cash" has an expiration date, which is chosen at
| the whim of the central bank. If you stuff it in your
| mattress like paper cash, it becomes worthless. Therefore,
| this scheme is a massive step backwards in terms of central
| bank control over our lives, relative to coins-and-banknotes
|
| Again, you must be confusing Taler with something else. Also,
| coins and banknotes have expiration dates too (for instance,
| try pay something with a Deutsch Mark note today).
|
| Kind of sad to see the "Evil central banks want to control
| your life" conspiracy theory leaving the mud of 4chan to
| reach HN...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Like a lot of conspiracy theory, there's a core of truth.
| All you have to do is ask the question "is this system
| going to be allowed to be used for crime on a huge scale",
| receive the obvious answer "no", and infer that there will
| be _some_ control built into the system.
|
| Where it leaps into conspiracy is the question of when and
| whom this will be used against. But it's fairly obvious
| that measures will be taken against drug sellers, sex
| workers, banned political parties and so on.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This has nothing to do with what GP _invented_ (amount
| control and expiration date set by central banks).
|
| > But it's fairly obvious that measures will be taken
| against drug sellers, sex workers, banned political
| parties and so on.
|
| Yeah, of course like governments already do with cash!
|
| There's a big difference between saying "governments are
| going to police things" (which is always true, that's
| their purpose in fact) and spreading made up claims
| involving a central bank's conspiracy (spoiler alert:
| policing isn't part of central banker's job, if somebody
| is going to do anything it will not be them but the plain
| and boring law enforcement agencies, but that sounds less
| bad as a conspiracy to say that police is going to police
| stuff, I guess).
|
| If anything, a technology like Taler is a big improvement
| in terms of individual freedom compared to things like
| credit cards. If governments want to stop cash to combat
| crime (and save money, the logistics around cash is very
| expensive) having Taler instead of Visa is a massive
| benefit for privacy and freedom.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The argument is that, if the money is just a database,
| the police will get it policed, or the bank will police
| it themselves, in an extra-legal way of just deleting or
| freezing accounts on request.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Like with regular bank accounts you mean?
|
| If you live in a country where the police can delete or
| freeze your bank account without legal control (or at
| all, even), then you're screwed and you can either change
| your government or find a new country, the fact that cash
| exists is not _at all_ a big enough a guarantee for your
| freedom. At that point the government could also seize
| all your properties (including cash, something that the
| US police routinely does[1]) and /or keep you under
| arrest in secret prisons.
|
| If you hope a technological mean (be it rudimentary like
| cash, or more modern like a blockchain) can help you
| protect your freedom against evil government, I have bad
| news for you. No technology can solve your political
| problems.
|
| [1]: https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-
| cash-from...
| oaiey wrote:
| My question is: How does the average Jane and Joe benefits
| compared to Debit and Credit Cards? Privacy, they do not care.
| Being anonymous, they do not care.
|
| So a dead initiative?
| some-username wrote:
| My understanding here is that the main objective is to break up
| the MasterCard/Visa duopoly. I guess breaking up duopolies is
| always a win for the general public, no?
| pasc1878 wrote:
| In the UK and I thought in most of the EU you can just use
| your Bank's app to send money into someone else's bank
| account.
|
| So not replacing MasterCard/Visa especially as that requires
| a lot to be able to accept payments.
| some-username wrote:
| ...and, as quoted by sunshine_reggae, lower transaction costs.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| as an average joe on the consumer end I don't care about
| transaction costs. at least here in germany that's the
| vendor's problem.
| some-username wrote:
| Won't the vendors just design their prices in a way that
| it's economically feasible for them - they just include the
| transaction costs in the price?
| kybernetyk wrote:
| yes, but they're not allowed to charge different prices
| depending on payment method. so they may factor those
| costs in - but everyone pays them. doesn't matter if
| they're paying cash or visa. so as a consumer I don't
| care about taler's lower transaction costs because I
| still have to pay the full price. so why should I switch?
| I'm happy with my visa on my apple watch.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| the vendor factors them in the final price, especially if
| you're buying something below 10 euros
|
| not to mention online micropayments such as donations which
| could allow people to just send 1 dollar without fear of
| fees taking up most of it
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Especially while having to pay 19-25% VAT on most
| purchases...
| vages wrote:
| If it's equally convenient and cheaper, people could easily use
| this. It may even be their bank who sets it up for them when
| they pay for something.
|
| I know at least one person employed in banking who thinks it's
| insane that Visa and Mastercard get a 2% cut of any
| transaction.
| unmole wrote:
| > Visa and Mastercard get a 2% cut of any transaction.
|
| They don't. In the EU, the intercharge fees is capped at
| 0.3%. Even in the US they only keep a fraction of the fees,
| the rest goes to card issuers.
| eigenket wrote:
| The EU solved that in 2015, the fee is capped at 0.3% for
| credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards. Call up / write to
| your representative in whatever country you live in and ask
| why your country hasn't done that yet.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You can't pay your average person with a Debit or Credit card
|
| Edit: yes I am familiar with the various 'sending money to
| people' systems in Europe, but they don't rely on a debit card
| for the most part, rather, your bank account
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| In Scandinavia we do exactly that via the Vipps platform and
| mobile app.
| eigenket wrote:
| Across a lot of Europe there are systems/companies which
| already fill this role. I'm familiar with Blik in Poland
| which in addition to letting you buy stuff online and in
| person pretty also lets you send money to an average person
| using only their mobile phone number.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| In the UK I can use my bank's app/website to send money to
| another person's bank account.
|
| What do these 'sending money to people' systems do more than
| that?
| eigenket wrote:
| To send a normal person money using blik you just need
| their phone number, this is usually more streamlined to
| obtain/deal with than the traditional identifying numbers
| for bank accounts.
|
| To buy something online using blik your bank's app
| generates a 6 digit one time code which is valid for
| something like 2 minutes. You enter that on the website of
| whoever you're trying to pay rather than give them your
| card number and cvv. This is nice because in addition to
| being a lot shorter to enter than a card number a nefarious
| person can't reuse the code to perform more transactions at
| a later date (since they don't have your card number).
| pasc1878 wrote:
| So in this case the two parties both need to be
| registered with the app and then can exchange money that
| they easily know e.g. the phone number.
|
| The phone number is an id into the bilk system.
|
| With bank transfers both parties do not need to be
| register with an app they just use the id that they have
| already for other reasons the bank sort code and id. So
| needs less extra infrastructure but the user interface is
| more unfriendly (people don't remember their bank account
| number).
|
| Now if banks linked your phone number to the account
| number and sort code.....
| eigenket wrote:
| The way it works in Poland is that the banks which
| participate in the blik system (which I think is all or
| most of the banks with large usership) take care of the
| link between phone number and account for you. You don't
| need to register for anything special just provide your
| number when you open your bank account.
|
| There is no separate app for blik (at least as far as I'm
| aware) the functionality is integrated into my bank's
| app.
| n_ary wrote:
| I absolutely care about privacy. Also, if I can pay the kebab
| shop with less fee with my phone(hopefully) rather than them
| putting up a note that "only cash"(because CC charges large
| fees), it'll be an immediate win for me to avoid carrying
| wallet full of heavy coins and cash everywhere like medieval
| times.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If you believe that kebab shops, or any shops, that put up
| such signs are really about card fees then I have bridge to
| sell you...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| They do though. I have been to several who refuse cards for
| payments below a certain (pretty low) amount.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Minimum amount for card payments , indeed because of
| fees, is not the same as refusing card payments
| altogether like the person I replied to wrote.
|
| Cash only is not really about card fees...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But if you only sell low value items, it may not be worth
| it, especially if you won't loose many customers because
| most customers have cash at hand.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Let's spell it out, then: Cash only is about tax, not
| card fees.
| niyaven wrote:
| Debit and credit cards are not popular everywhere. In Germany,
| their market share is below 50% in e-commerce transactions. In
| retail it's just above 50%. If you look at the overall volume,
| 82% of their transactions are made in cash.
|
| Now, would they swap cash this solution? I doubt it... Privacy
| is a reason but not the only one.
| eigenket wrote:
| Germany is particularly weird for that. Visiting Germany from
| the UK or Poland paying for stuff feels like going back in
| time like 15-20 years.
|
| I have a strong memory of going to a cafe next to my hotel in
| Berlin and ordering a coffee and being completely shocked I
| couldn't pay for it by card. I hadn't even considered that I
| might need cash. After some conversation the nice lady in the
| cafe told me keep the coffee and to come back the next day
| with the cash. They really hate card payments for some
| reason.
|
| On the other hand in Poland I've been unable to use my card
| in a couple of places because they only take mobile
| payments/Blik. The contrast is wild.
| arnorhs wrote:
| Anecdotally, privacy is actually something that people care
| about today. I used to think that it was mostly software geeks
| that cared about privacy, but during the past few years there's
| been so much discussion about various privacy issues, as well
| as discussions in my community etc.
|
| Young people in particular care way more about privacy that us
| older people. In fact, young people feel way more anxiety
| around things that are tied to your identity.
|
| But even despite them, I feel like even in my extended family
| privacy issues are increasingly very important to people.
| Everybody knows somebody who has been scammed.. even lost a
| great amount of money.
|
| Your average user is caring more and more about security and
| privacy.
|
| Re: being anonymous, I don't know. I suspect the anonymity part
| is more related to privacy for most people.
|
| The other benefits of this of course is that you can make your
| own payment system and integration, and you won't need to be
| dependent upon VISA/Mastercard for your payments. Cheaper
| transaction fees ultimately helps lower product prices, enables
| microtransactions and more - I wouldn't discount how much of a
| big deal this would be.
|
| I'm sure once they've finalized the whole thing,
| Misa/Vastercard will have employed their lobbying powers to the
| fullest to inject themselves into the final spec, but here's
| hoping.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Dutch debit cards cannot be used for online payments abroad. So
| the benefit is being able to make payments to, eg: Germany.
|
| Credit cards are terrible. One has to share a few secret
| numbers with the merchant and the merchant then takes money out
| of the cards account. It relies on fully trusting every single
| merchant to have perfect honestly and security.
|
| Plus credit cards have a transaction cost that is paid to
| foreign companies. It's quite ridiculous that a Dutch person
| buying online in Germany ends up paying a tiny transaction cost
| to a third country.
| sunshine_reggae wrote:
| > The initial investment into the required infrastructure is low
| and the payment mechanism operates more cost efficiently than
| existing payment solutions, with lower transaction fees - a
| benefit that will be shared by consumers and merchants.
|
| > This makes even micro-payments possible, creating an
| interesting and privacy preserving alternative to subscription-
| or advertisement-based revenue for newspapers and other
| publishers.
| robin_reala wrote:
| As an aside, the taler (or thaler) is an old German-and-
| surrounding-regions coin that's the root etymology for the word
| "dollar".
| im3w1l wrote:
| And the word thaler is a shortened version of Joachimsthaler.
| Joachimsthal was the place where the silver for the coins was
| mined. And the second part of that, thal, is cognate with
| English dale.
| krolley wrote:
| Very interesting! Dale is anachronistic in English by now I
| guess. I've only read it literarily as in "over hill and
| dale" and otherwise thought of Tal as valley in German.
| nullnix wrote:
| It's certainly not anachronistic in England in place names,
| nor as a name for a type of (water- or glacier-carved)
| landform.
| alentred wrote:
| Ha. I thought that "taler" is a wordplay for "teller" (like a
| bank teller).
| entropyie wrote:
| If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper
| article I read, I would happily do so. The biggest issue with
| paying for news is that you are reduced to a small handful of
| sources. I would like to read a couple of articles from a hundred
| sources, not a hundred articles from one source. Not sure this
| platform solves the problem, but it would be a game changer if it
| did.
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think
| it was tried?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Flattr was a kind of a version of that (although billed as
| "donations"), and it recently shut down.
|
| https://flattr.com/
| vaylian wrote:
| I appreciate the "service no longer exists" page. But is
| there any official statement why flattr was closed down?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I tried to use flattr a few years back, but the UX was
| horrible and for something that needs to become ubiquitous
| to be useful, that's not the kind of mistake you can
| afford.
| rglullis wrote:
| Take the Brave browser, swap their crypto wallet for this.
| asgeirn wrote:
| Yeah, I know of one example where idea was actually created
| and pitched to media outlets.
|
| They did not like the idea. They very much more like the idea
| of owning the customer and keeping the customer paying
| subscriptions.
|
| I also know of a media outlet which incentivizes customer to
| go from credit card payment to automated bank transfers,
| since credit cards expire every x years but the bank transfer
| goes on forever.
| Yoric wrote:
| A long time ago, Mozilla had a prototype of this, but it
| never took up, in part because there was no standard for web
| payments. Then Brave claimed to be working on this, I don't
| know the status. I believe that Chrome had someone working on
| this, too, at some point, but the project vanished.
| oblio wrote:
| Not hard enough. The problem with this model is that it would
| be vendor agnostic and no one wants to be the "dumb pipe".
| Everyone wants to own the entire system, ergo, proprietary
| payment systems (Google/Apple/Samsung/Microsoft/... Pay).
| pjc50 wrote:
| My standard reply to this: https://github.com/pjc50/misc-
| personal.github.io/blob/master...
|
| > If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper
| article I read
|
| Define "read". And "article". Should you get charged for every
| link preview you scroll past on Twitter? (see lawsuits! the
| publishers think you should, or at least that this is copyright
| infringement)
|
| Can I build a page with one "article" plus one thousand hidden
| iframes each of which also contains a one-cent "article"?
|
| Who polices fraud in this system? How much does it cost?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| That link doesn't work.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's pretty apt since the argument doesn't either[1].
|
| [1]Taler requires explicit user action for payment, it's
| not like publishers can charge you for scrolling.
| grothoff wrote:
| Not quite. GNU Taler's reference implementation requires
| explicit user consent for payment. But as GNU Taler is
| Free Software, you are free to modify the code on your
| system (and share your with others) to not require an
| explicit confirmation if you prefer that. Or even better,
| to add an option to do that on some "trusted" sites which
| you make configurable for each user via settings. I don't
| know if the risk is worth the UX improvement, but a key
| contribution of GNU Taler is that it is a Free Software
| payment system where you actually have the full four
| freedoms. Use them!
| littlestymaar wrote:
| While what you say is completely valid, that doesn't save
| the original argument by pcj50 which was made up claims
| about the ability for scammer to drain your wallet. Of
| course you could build your own implementation that
| allows for such an attack, it is not a valid criticism of
| the project.
| darkwater wrote:
| > Can I build a page with one "article" plus one thousand
| hidden iframes each of which also contains a one-cent
| "article"?
|
| It should be up to your user-agent (aka the browser) to
| implement your decision and protect you from scammers, just
| like it happens in the rest of scenarios.
| superzamp wrote:
| Great news from a project that deserves a close look for those
| not familiar with it already. Taler is very close in term of
| mindset to what Ripple was, as originally developped by Ryan
| Fugger, before helm changed hands and it became the commercial
| farce known as today's incarnation of Ripple / XRP.
| Animats wrote:
| _Where is the balance in my wallet stored?_
|
| _Your wallet stores digital coins and thus ultimately your
| computer holds your balance. The exchange keeps funds matching
| all unspent coins in a settlement account._
|
| _What if my wallet is lost?_
|
| _Since the digital coins of value in your wallet are anonymized,
| the exchange can not assist you in recovering a lost or stolen
| wallet. Just like with a physical wallet for cash, you are
| responsible for keeping it safe._
|
| _The risk of losing a wallet can be mitigated by making backups
| or keeping the balance reasonably low._ [1]
|
| Ah. This is Chaum's DigiCash, from 1990.[2] A good idea, too
| early.
|
| It's a system where coins are protected against double-spending
| by a database back-end. Which is how some centrally issued
| cryptocurrencies actually work.
|
| The half-anonymity is interesting. The recipient is not
| anonymous, but the sender is. That may make it a politically
| acceptable substitute for cash.
|
| It has the nice property that, unlike debit cards, etc., the
| recipient can't take more of your money than you give them.
|
| [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash
| asgeirn wrote:
| Ah, DigiCash! I was really optimistic on this concept in my
| student days - one local bank even had a PoC with digital cash.
| toyg wrote:
| _> That may make it a politically acceptable substitute for
| cash._
|
| I think you misspelled _un_ acceptable. Anonymous donations are
| a massive source of corruption, which is why they tend to be
| capped by law (and even then, I'm sure a lot of bad people
| manage to get around it).
|
| Political money needs total transparency.
|
| (Unless you meant "more acceptable to the general public for
| average transactions"; in which case I agree, but I suspect it
| will be the opposite for governments and law enforcement
| agencies...)
| 1116574 wrote:
| It is much better for govt as well. Instead of having
| untracked cash flows not paying taxes, now you can ensure
| taxes are paid (in EU seller is responsible for paying
| taxes). So your local govt can sell you this new (old) system
| as being just like cash, decentralised, anonymous, with no
| banking institutions at play, while having a closer watch on
| increasingly convoluted tax codes.
|
| As for donations, it's still good. Instead of having vast
| amount of cash flow unnoticed as bribes/corruption, now you
| atleast know that the politician received that amount of
| money. I don't see how it is worse that normal cash.if one
| can cap amount of anonymous donations with banks and cash,
| why not do the same here?
| toyg wrote:
| _> Instead of having untracked cash flows not paying taxes_
|
| Blockchain payments are tracked, so are bank movements;
| that's not the problem. The problem with blockchain
| solutions (well, one of many) is that they're
| _pseudonymous_ , so authorities have to work to demonstrate
| that account X is linked to person A. Compare with the
| regular banking system, where every account must have a
| real identity attached: from the government's perspective,
| banks are so much better, and they already work (through
| Visa/MasterCard/Amex). Governments have absolutely no
| incentive to accept or push an anonymous digital currency.
| None whatsoever. The more anonymous a currency is (and this
| one is a bit more anonymous than blockchains), the worse it
| looks from the perspective of the state.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Also reminiscent of Mondex, from the same year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
| Vinnl wrote:
| Also sounds like Chipknip, in the Netherlands, launched
| somewhat later (which also never took off):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipknip
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Sounds a bit like Mondex.
| null0pointer wrote:
| Brilliant! The downsides of both crypto and centralized
| control! Just use Monero instead.
| 0x64 wrote:
| Exactly. Even the transaction costs aren't great:
|
| "Actual transaction costs are estimated around 0.001 cent/tx
| (at high transaction rates, amortized over billions of
| transactions, excluding migration costs). Note that this is
| an early estimate -- and could thus easily be 10x higher."
| [1]
|
| Transactions costing singular cents [2], and very soon
| fractions of a cent [3], are already doable on public rollups
| providing actual control of your own funds, with escape
| hatches in case the system sequencer falls over [4]. These
| are, of course, still under heavy development. If privacy is
| a requirement, there's a zk-rollup for that (or, just use
| Monero). Not to mention support for social recovery.
|
| This is a very PoS-Ethereum-centric (and L2-scaling-centric)
| view. There are even cheaper chains that trade L1
| decentralization for faster blocktimes, instant finality,
| and/or much cheaper fees.
|
| [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html
|
| [2] https://l2fees.info/
|
| [3] https://www.eip4844.com/
|
| [4] https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary
| bheadmaster wrote:
| This is exciting news.
|
| GNU Taler has been in development since 2014 (10 years now!). I'm
| very happy to see European Commision's interest in this privacy-
| protecting technology. Along with GNU Net and GNU Social (amongst
| others), it seems like one of those technologies that have a huge
| potential to make internet a better place for everyone.
|
| While many consider GNU projects to be vaporware with development
| pace of a turtle, it seems that the turtle is slowly starting to
| lead the race. GNU Hurd has also had significant news lately [0].
| I'm feeling really hopeful about this, especially after the
| somewhat recent RMS lynching campaign that was lead by major
| corporations.
|
| [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2023-q4.html
| eigenket wrote:
| My impression (which might be unfair since I haven't used the
| Taler system) is that this looks like a technically better but
| practically worse version of payment systems which already exist
| in parts of Europe like the Polish Blik, Swedish Swish, Norwegian
| Vipps and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name
| of that one).
|
| In "the real world" I really don't want to be dealing with a
| wallet of electronic cash stored on my computer. What I want to
| be able to do is relatively seamlessly pay for a curry or send my
| friend some money I owe them or something.
| rambambram wrote:
| > and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name
| of that one).
|
| iDeal you mean?
| eigenket wrote:
| Maybe, I've never used the Dutch one.
| jgilias wrote:
| From looking at the GNU Taler FAQ[1], making "p2p" payments still
| needs to go through the exchange, and the exchanges need to be
| independently audited to ensure compliance.
|
| Ok. So, privacy?
|
| Given that the system ultimately relies on centralized actors, it
| can only be private for payment amounts below any applicable
| travel rule amount in the given jurisdiction.
|
| [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html
| some-username wrote:
| I find it kind of cute that they set up this mock-up currency
| 'kudos' to toy around with it. (https://demo.taler.net/en/)
|
| What makes it (more) cute is that you can use it to reserve
| entries in their GNS first-come-first-served service.
| (https://fcfs.gnunet.org/)
|
| GNS being the GNU Name System which is a decentralized/p2p
| equivalent to DNS. (https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html)
| pndy wrote:
| These examples under Essays feels obnoxiously dystopian; it's
| just a demo environment of course but I really hope that's not
| the feature where were heading into, in which every single
| link/piece of information on the Internet is locked behind
| payment.
|
| Doomsaying aside, here in Poland nearly everything can be paid
| with BLIK payments system - whether it's something you purchase
| on the Internet or small groceries at shop around the corner.
| You can also withdraw/depo money by ATM or do a small transfer
| to someone's else phone number
|
| https://www.blik.com/en
| some-username wrote:
| Why I find it kind of cute is that those buys (GNS fcfs) are
| basically meaningless - in a p2p system everyone can just
| host a service like this.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| "..funded as pilot under the Next Generation Internet (NGI)
| initiative within the European Commission.."
|
| pilot + next gen + initiative + european commission .
|
| This combination of terms == no action.
| orwin wrote:
| The last time I participated in a project with all those terms
| (not 'next gen, it was' future', but the idea is the same), it
| gave birth to the legislation that forces manufacturers to keep
| providing spare parts 10 years after product EOL, and to
| provide plans for independants builders after that.
|
| Long winded way of saying 'you're wrong'.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| Not to mention the NGI is not a bunch of words, they have
| been funding many actionable projects including pretty much
| all the Fediverse.
| pyrale wrote:
| > This payment system is different from current online payment
| methods, like credit cards or bank transfers, in that it offers
| privacy for the buyer: neither merchants nor banks can trace or
| link the payments.
|
| Banks will _love_ a solution that completely prevents them from
| implementing KYC /AML regulation they are required to follow.
|
| Truly baffling that such a project manages, if their claims are
| true, to get public funding after years of crypto grift scandals.
| superzamp wrote:
| Tbh, the hit to omniscient funds traceability is not that
| different from what some financial institutions started to
| accept with Stablecoins already, i.e. a model where KYC/AML
| happens at the edges but not within the transaction graph
| itself. It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting
| acceptance in the regulatory spheres.
| pyrale wrote:
| > It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting
| acceptance in the regulatory spheres.
|
| The only way this gains regulatory acceptance is if the
| KYC/AML regulation is moved to the audited exchange - I.E.
| less friction for authorities to get transaction
| informations, not more.
| Aerroon wrote:
| If you ever want digital cash then that digital cash has to
| offer the same benefits real cash has: anonymity from the
| state. Until then you're stuck with credit card companies
| selling your data.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| This seems to be a chaumian mint.
|
| How will the onramp look like? I guess they'll have to do KYC
| when taking in money?
|
| What software can be used to use it?
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Another one? Europe already has multiple private and secure
| online payments: for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
| 1116574 wrote:
| Each country's banks/tech firms have invented their own way
| that is either tied to one app or the banking system/bank
| account. It is not anonymous for the buyer, and it always
| requires a central server for every transaction. From what I
| gather GNU taler solves those problems.
| summm wrote:
| How is that one private? It is coupled to your bank account so
| your purchases can be nicely tracked, and to add insult, you
| also need to use your bank's crappy online banking app
| eigenket wrote:
| Blik is explicitly not private in that sense, you have to
| trust your bank to use it. Not sure what they meant by that.
| However if your bank has a crappy online banking app and you
| live in Poland then you should probably change bank. The bank
| apps I've used as a foreigner living in Poland have all been
| essentially flawless (even using the English language
| versions).
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Do you really suppose anyone in the EU will allow you to maka
| any payments that are completely anonymous/untraceable? I do
| trust my bank, if I wouldn't trust them I would find another
| one. I don't see what problem taler is supposed to solve.
| summm wrote:
| Money streams would not be completely anonymous. Only the
| end user would be anonymous. And, the competition are not
| necessarily only banks, but shady, non-EU middlemen such as
| Visa, MasterCard, PayPal etc. where it is well-known that
| they sell your data wherever.
| Mutttttioi wrote:
| Funny,
|
| first time you will hear about this and last time.
|
| I'm curious how those companies have budget for playing around
| and why they believe they will be relevant enough to have any
| impact on daily life for anyone at all?
| lencastre wrote:
| I just want to know, when will this be live and when can I use
| it.
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(page generated 2024-01-18 23:01 UTC)