submitted 5 days ago by Hirom@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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GNU Taler is a Free Software payment system that preserves the privacy of payers while ensuring that income is visible to authorities.

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[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 30 points 5 days ago

From the FAQ:

How to avoid digital cash expiration?

Taler e-money is issued with a validity period. One month before the expiration date, your wallet should automatically exchange any digital cash that is about to expire for new digital cash with an extended validity period. However, if your wallet is offline for an extended period of time, it may be unable to do so. Ensure your wallet is regularly online to avoid losing money due to expiration!

You can lose money if the coins in your wallet "expire".

The fact that this system is shipping v1.0 with such an anti-user design deficiency tells me all I need to know. I wonder how many Taler "beta" users will lose their cash before they fix the design. I wonder how much of the customer support load of the exchanges will be dealing with this issue.

And this comes after a decade of the cryptocurrency industry educating users to store their funds in a cold-wallet to avoid getting hacked, so it's counter-intuitive to anyone with passing experience of digital currencies. If there's one thing that we learnt from the cryptocurrecy industry, it's that users don't care to understand how the technology works, and will do stupid things. Anything that seeks wide adoption needs to be designed for non-technical people.

What a terrible design decision.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 21 points 5 days ago

If there’s one thing that we learnt from the cryptocurrecy industry, it’s that users don’t care to understand how the technology works, and will do stupid things.

Yes, like turning a digital payment system into a speculative asset and making it basically impossible to actually buy anything with it.

But it seems you are totally missing the point of Taler, as it doesn't even aim to be anything like so called crypto-"currencies". It's a digital payment system like Paypal, but decentralized.

[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago

But it seems you are totally missing the point of Taler, as it doesn’t even aim to be anything like so called crypto-“currencies”. It’s a digital payment system like Paypal, but decentralized.

No, I'm not missing that point, I understand the design goals of Taler. You seem to have misinterpreted my comment. I am pointing out that the inability to store Taler currency in a cold wallet is counter to existing user education from similar systems (digital currencies) and therefore will lead to loss of funds of users who don't understand how Taler works.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 16 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Except for some very niche crypto-currency users no one stores "money" like that. You have a bank account where you store money.

[-] WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

What other digital payment system than crypto allows cold wallets?

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago

I think the whole point is that you're not supposed to keep your money in your taler wallet for an extended period. Its mostly a way to facilitate payment between different crypto/currencies

[-] BeliefPropagator@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 5 days ago

To maintain the anonymity goal you still want to obtain Talers in advance (otherwise you'd open yourself up to timing correlation) - so they will have to be in the wallet for some non-negligible duration.

Regardless of expiration that also means the device holding the secrets to use the Talers can be lost in that time, so you need some e.g. encrypted cloud backup to restore from. Since people are terrible at printing out recovery codes, you can either have key escrow (leading to a compromise of the anonymity properties), or you accept that some people will lose their money for reasons they will not understand.

Regardless, I would much prefer Taler as a CBDC to whatever permissioned Blockchain garbage the Big4 consulting companies will come up with.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Taler is not a store of value. Exchanging some Taler is like going to the ATM and withdrawing some cash to put in your wallet.

[-] BeliefPropagator@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 days ago

See my first sentence.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago

Yes, like cash.

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

So its basically like taking money out if the ATM before you go spend it. You dont have to do it when you're buying things

[-] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 5 days ago

I have seen 0 articles relating GNU Taler with the digital Euro, and I am very worried this incredible project will end nowhere. Because the digital Euro is definitely coming and that would be the moment to put Taler to work.

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago

As a french citizen, i reeeeeaaaaaally hope the digital euro will be good, and truly as flexible as cash

[-] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 5 days ago

It won't be great if non-libre payment systems are still the rule.

[-] sonalder@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

Are you a utopist or brainwashed by Lagarde ?

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

I just think the eu has been pretty based lately so i hope it'll continue

[-] sonalder@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Did you heard and read what the banksters said about the digital euro named cash+ ? Did you see how it this authoritarian technology have been abused by the countries that have already implemented it ?

CBDC have nothing to do with cash, it will be closed and opaque, surveilled and controlled, frozable and perishable. Of course it won't be on day one, they ususally wait to be necessary in people lives to change stuff just like private companies does. Don't be fool by the banksters, especially the ones from central banks and cantillonaires... They wan't to remove cash to have better control over our money.

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

I largely agree with you, although the language you use implies other perspectives i dont agree with. Most current CBDC's suck huge amounts of ass, but i have two reasons i still think the digital euro will be good.

A regular credit card has all the issues you described, except the bank, government and an american company (visa or mastercard) have those powers, CBDC's that work the way you described will only give the government and your bank that power, which still sucks, just slightly less. Of course the real risk is that they use that digital cash to phase out real cash, but that could happen anyways.
The digital euro is not what you described, the initiative's website promises it will be useable offline, as private as cash. Quote: "Even when you use digital euro online, we would not be able to identify you based on your payments."

[-] sonalder@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Honestly european bankster telling me they won't replace cash with CBDC (while removing more and more ATM in rural areas) and that we will be anonymous (while attacking privacy respecting companies in order to protect citizens from terrorist and money laundering) sounds like propaganda to me. But I will keep using cash as long as possible alongside Bitcoin, Lignting Network and Monero and NEVER ever enter this CBDC system.

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

I think that contradiction is easily resolved when you realise that the eu isn't a monolith, and it's three seperate groups doing each of those things (also all the attacks on privacy never make it through, still concerning though)

But for your plan for what payment options you'll use I think that's based and you should keep doing that.

[-] enemenemu@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago

Taler has a completely different application. Digital euro won't use it

[-] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago

Could you expand?

[-] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago

AFAIK Taler is for payments, the Digital Euro is for storing value.

[-] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago

Yes, but also, your Taler wallet stores value too, I guess.

In any case, I wonder why Taler has not made it a point that they are (or could) be a payment system for the digital euro.

[-] sp3ctre@feddit.org 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

If it's not going to be used for that, it could still be used as a good paypal alternative.

[-] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 4 days ago

I'll stick with monero.

[-] ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 days ago

Don't view keys in Monero "expose information to the authorities" if used in such a way? Hard to see the need for a system where tokens can "expire" when we already have a perfectly good one where they don't.

[-] HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee 8 points 5 days ago

Wow that sounds like a terrible product no one would want, who is the target audience for such a thing?

[-] kbal@fedia.io 13 points 5 days ago

Target audience: People who want to pay for stuff anonymously through the Internet. It's a large and underserved market.

It's a big part of why people got so excited about bitcoin, and why it was so disappointing when it spectacularly failed to be any good at that application.

[-] HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It doesnt sound very anonymous. If the info is "visable to authorities" then its not very private.

Paypal and most other services already allow for payments to be "private" but visable to authorities.

People who actually want private and anoymous payments already use crypto.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Taler ensures asymmetric privacy. The buyer does not expose their identity to the seller (or the government), not what they bought to their bank/payment-provider. But the seller needs to expose their income for tax purposes. This is a good compromise as it follows existing law and prevents tax-evasion and (to some extend) money laundering.

[-] kbal@fedia.io 6 points 5 days ago

Taler does use crypto, aka cryptography, to make sending payments securely anonymous. That is the main point of it.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The same audience as Paypal, which seems to be reasonably popular. Except this is privacy preserving and an open standard that many providers can use.

[-] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 7 points 5 days ago

Who is the Payment Service Provider?

I can't tell if this is decentralised.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 9 points 5 days ago

It can be many different ones. Usually your home bank would allow you to exchange some Euro into Taler tokens and then use those to pay in compatible stores. But instead of a centralized system there can be many different exchanges that follow the same standard (protocol) and can be used with the same software and wallet apps.

[-] novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one 6 points 5 days ago

Due to the fact that Taler is designed for government to see all income means it's not an option. Is there any privately owned company anywhere in the world that uses Taler?

Given government's attitude that all money everywhere belong's to the government, they only decide on how much to let the worthless servants get to use, I'm good with tax evasion. When I carry cash at stores, it's fine if they don't report the income. Government is very good at taking money by force, but not as interested to pay for anything. It is in store's best interest to accept privacy coins like Monero or Zcash before using something like Taler

[-] Hirom@beehaw.org 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It's an objective improvement over EMV which doesn't protect privacy at all.

Taler protect payer privacy while exposing income information. Meaning it can help collect taxes to pay for infrastructure, education, public service, ...

That's a fine compromise. I hope Taler become a practical alternative to EMV and other shitty payment systems being pushed by banks.

[-] novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one 4 points 5 days ago

Stores should accept monero to eliminate paying taxes

[-] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 18 hours ago

Nah, I think paying Monero in the physical world is much like paying cash by mail for digital services - awesome but impractical. Why not use the right tools for each job? Better stick to Monero for the digital world and cash in the physical one.

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

Lol yeah right

Also you would still have to pay sales tax

[-] novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 5 days ago

You should go to a few countries and see how the world operates. Stores can include all taxes in the quoted price upfront before the sale, as many countries embed the taxes in the price shown publicly, and then the store takes privacy coin payment like monero, and if the store does not record a few sales to skip on taxes since there's no payment account tied to company name, even better

this post was submitted on 11 May 2025

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