They explicitly mention that it’s not.
Quinte neat. It simply using open source to preserve the existing financial players. Financial intermediaries are not eliminated.
> It would be possible, however, to withdraw coins denominated in Bitcoin into a Taler wallet (with an appropriate exchange), which would give some benefits over plain Bitcoin, such as instant confirmation times.
I don't really know what to make of it.
It's a federated system/protocol that doesn't have a currency of its own. There should be Exchanges you are supposed to trust, that accept your CURRENCY_NAME and give you anonymous tokens (think of it as electronic cash) in exchange. You spend them in Merchants' shops. The Merchants claim the CURRENCY_NAME back from the Exchanges. No one knows what you bought but the Merchants can be audited by the Government to be taxed. That's their plan as I understand it.