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submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

GNU Taler begins operating in Switzerland, distributed by the Taler Operations AG. Gnu Taler aims to be a “digital wallet” and has been used by the swiss national bank as well as the european national bank as a example for how a digital currency handed out by the state could work. It aims to be as privacy preserving as cash for the buyer while not allowing the seller to evade taxes.

Currently the Taler is brought out by a special organisation, the “Taler Operations AG”, and not the national bank, although both the national bank as well as the Taler Team have shown interest in a official digial currency by the national bank based on the Taler. But we need to relativate as the national council has stated that the introduction of a digital currency would probably take relatively major legislative changes and therefore take a bit of time.

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[-] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

would be pretty based if they actually succeeds

[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

I warmly recommend anybody who didn't use GNU Taler yet to do so right now, for free, in minutes :

GNU Taler provides a well done demonstration https://demo.taler.net/ that one can try right here in the browser, going from a virtual bank to their wallet and buying items in "KUDOS". It does address quite a few points raised in different discussions here.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

And here is transfer from my Web based wallet to my mobile wallet, again with the testing currency :

[-] [email protected] 111 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I looked at this a looong time ago, but the basic idea is that the tokens (equivalent to cash coins/banknotes) are generated on the end user's device, through some public-key cryptographic back-and-forth protocol. The issuer (bank/central bank/payment provider) does not see these tokens (they're only on the end users device), but can verify that they're legit (i.e. issued by them) somehow.

You can take one of these tokens to them, and deposit it in an account. They won't know who it's from but they know it was legitimately issued by them. Depositing a token is also supposed to be the only way of figuring out if it is a legit token, the bank will not tell you if a token is legit unless you deposit it.

When someone pays with these tokens in a shop, the shop will want to immediately (during checkout) deposit them, to make sure they're legit, and also to make sure the token hasn't been double spent. A shop that doesn't do that makes itself vulnerable to fraud. This means shops will have a hard time hiding their revenue (to dodge taxes) compared to cash.

If someone you trust gives you a token (birthday money from your grandma, say), you don't have to immediately deposit said token, since presumably you trust your grandma to not give you fake or double-spent tokens. Since you trust you grandma, there is no need to deposit the token and involve the bank, and that transfer would be untraceable (it's literally just copying a number from her phone to yours).

The idea is that shop owners would have a hard time dodging taxes without opening themselves up to fraudsters using fake tokens, while the customer cannot be identified. You'd also be able to exchange tokens with family and friends in a way that isn't traceable, as long as you trust them to not screw you over.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Dude, I assume my grandma has absolutely been scamed, and her birthday money is basically as valuable as Trump coins

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm expecting that if she has been scammed and her token was stolen, you can report this token to the police and they might be able to ask the banking system in which account was this token deposited, to hopefully trace the scammer back.

If so, this looks safer than the scams that ask grandmas to get giftcard codes.

But that's assuming that the token was obtained from grandm's bank and not that the grandma paid a scammer in some other untraceable way to obtain a fake token from the scammer. That would be a different kind of scam.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Then you wanna deposit it immediately to find out, like a seller does

[-] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago

iirc they did have some mechanisms to prevent token fraud but I honestly can't remeber how it was implemented.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Can you find the link from where you originally got this information?

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Go on the official Taler Website, they have all the info there iirc

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Great write up. Thank you.

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[-] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago

Can we get GNU Taller to all europe please

[-] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago

Digital currency without "blockchain", say it ain't so! This is why I think it might actually work. It's not based on some kind of Rube Goldberg experiment to run the world power into nothingness.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

Customers will use traditional money transfers to send money to a digital Exchange and in return receive (anonymized) digital cash. Customers can use this digital cash to anonymously pay Merchants. Merchants can redeem the digital cash for traditional money at the digital Exchange. As Merchants are not anonymous, they can be taxed, enabling income or sales taxes to be withheld by the state while providing anonymity for Customers.

The digital exchange seems to be centralised.

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[-] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago

What's their stance on porn?

[-] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago

That'll be a big one. I could see tons of artists wanting to flock to a platform without risks of a ban.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago

And any platform that wants to allow adult content would have a viable means to secure funding. You can't overstate how far the chilling effects of VISA et al's anti-porn stance reaches.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

It seems sellers can host their own payment receipt service and the verfication comes from cryptographically signing the money when it's issued from issuers

[-] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago

Could this be scaled to other European countries?

[-] [email protected] 42 points 5 days ago

Shouldn't we gather feedback first from that experiment before scaling up?

[-] [email protected] 19 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Been waiting for Taler for ages. I'm ready now, you wait 😝

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago

LETS GO!?!?!?!? I have been waiting for taler to be usable for ages now. I doubt it will ever come to canada, but hey, small wins are small wins.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

What's their stance on heroin?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Buy all you want, sell and you're fucked.

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this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
661 points (99.6% liked)

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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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