GNU Taler v1.0 Released

taler.net

25 points·p4bl0··3 comments

Stablecoin without the stupid "coin" part.

Taler has "One-sided Privacy":

1. The payment system operators cannot track how a customer spends their electronic money (blind signatures)

2. merchants' income is transparent for tax collection authorities. This helps prevent tax evasion and money laundering.

Other privacy features: decentralized, no customer registration.

Multi-currency support, one-click payments, very suitable for micropayments.

Yes, and I'll add that Taler is the only way that currently exists to actually make digital cash. It's not a cryptocurrency and doesn't use a blockchain, which is indeed a very good thing: it doesn't try to be at the same time the currency and the transaction system. It is only a transaction system, which works independently of the actual currency used on it, and is able to perform transactions of bearer-based tokens (i.e., actually analog to digital cash) rather than ledger-based tokens (analog to an internal bank wire transfer) like blockchain-based solutions are limited to.

And as you said, Taler also offers privacy for the buyer while maintaining accountability for the sellers (allowing taxability, accountability, etc.), which makes it a very good candidate for implementing a CBDC (central bank digital currency).

That's why European Commission supports it.

>Our work is co-funded by the European Commission and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) as part of the NGI TALER project.

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