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Comment by jqpabc123 | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I just don't get it.

Seems like a lot of work to offer a less functional alternative to a VISA gift card purchased with cash.

The only real advantage I see is you don't need to stop by WalMart. Maybe the activation fees with Taler are less but I'm sure it's also less widely accepted.

VISA eGift cards are now available for purchase online with funds deposited to a digital wallet. These won't be totally anonymous but then as far as I can tell, neither is Taler --- to provide all the functionality they claim, they will need to maintain records of both purchaser and merchant.

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In addition to the huge advantage of not needing to get cash from an ATM and physically carry it to the card vendor: Transactions made on the same eGift card wallet are tied together. With Taler you have a wallet with coins you can spend separately, and which cannot be correlated, neither by your bank nor the merchant. What makes you believe anyone (except maybe the purchaser themselves) needs to maintain records about the purchaser? As far as I understood it, their claim is that exactly this is not necessary.

What makes you believe anyone (except maybe the purchaser themselves) needs to maintain records about the purchaser?

Unless you buy your digital coins using cash, the exchanges have the identity of those who purchase and redeem coins/tokens.

From the documentation:

  Taler is compatible with anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulation, as well as data protection regulation (such as GDPR).

AML and KYC are all about removing anonymity. Merchants may not have the ability to correlate a purchase to you but the exchanges do; otherwise, they wouldn't be able to comply.

If you buy a coin, you have the bank sign it blindly, that means, after you unblind it, it is mathematically not possible to deeive any correlation between the coin and what the bank saw. The bank only knows the value of the coin(s) you bought, not the identity, and, apparently this seems enough to fulfill those regulations? If you draw cash from an ATM, the bank also has an exact record from that ATM. And in addition might have recorded serial numbers of the banknotes... The exchange gets information about the merchant, but not about the purchaser (at least from the coin. The merchant might submit info about the purchaser such as the shipping address, but that is independent of the payment mechanism). That's strictly less than any credit card transaction.

The bank only knows the value of the coin(s) you bought, not the identity, and, apparently this seems enough to fulfill those regulations?

"Forgetting Your Customer" is *not* how you comply with "Know Your Customer".

Do you have any reference to how your blinding/unblinding supposedly works? Is it even mathematically possible to *insure* your identity is forgotten --- while still maintaining verifiable coin/transaction validity?

Without some such insurance, you're operating on blind trust and assumption. And you know what happens when you *assume* too much?

And in addition might have recorded serial numbers of the banknotes...

Except in very specific, pre-arranged circumstances (such as a ransom demand) they don't bother recording serial numbers --- simply because the info is quickly rendered obsolete and useless from the way cash is freely exchanged and "mixed" in the marketplace.

Cash is typically considered untraceable and is the ultimate physical form of anonymity. It neither requires nor provides any identity info. Gift cards purchased with cash are the ultimate form of digital anonymity. Neither of these conform to KYC.

The base objective of AML and KYC is to eliminate anonymity from transactions. Compliance is generally not possible otherwise.

Yes, it is mathematically ensured that the coin issuer cannot link the actual coin to the account you are buying it with. No blind trust needed, check the math yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature For the specific implementation, you can check the taler source code.

Is is possible to trace back a gift card to the store that sold it? Maybe even the date and time? Then get the surveillance tape... If you pay with the same gift card more than once, all those transactions can be linked.

> Seems like a lot of work to offer a less functional alternative to a VISA gift card purchased with cash.

Not sure about Taler. But with Chaum's DigiCash from the 90s you could do micropayments and other fun stuff.

The blind signatures gave Alice a way to pull out some amount of her "Cipherbucks" or whatever from her bank. Then she could PGP them to Bob, who could "uncryptography" them and redeem them at OverTheBorder Bank(tm).

If I read correctly, Alice nests a unique number in her sealed thingy, and the the banks would keep an append-only record of these unique numbers. So it's something like this:

1. Alice's bank knows she made a request for $X cipherbucks

2. Bob's bank knows he made a deposit of $Z cipherbucks

3. Bob's bank knows the deposit is good because the unique ID isn't already in the database

As for your question below-- doesn't that satisfy the "Know your customer" rules? It's functionally equivalent to cash so I don't see how it wouldn't

Edit: I'm not sure of the properties of the transactions, so maybe $X and $Z have to be equal? No clue. Still, you get the idea...

It's functionally equivalent to cash so I don't see how it wouldn't

Cash is the ultimate form of anonymity. It neither requires nor provides any identification info. It does not conform to KYC.

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