Taler Systems SA is looking for investors for development of GNU Taler

https://taler.net/en/news/2022-11.html

by pabs3 • 4 years ago

95 46 4 years ago

I want to work on this! I'm looking forward to helping raise these millions and making the wheels turn. 5 million is really not that big of an ask here.

iguessthislldo• 4 years ago

I know they say it isn't a currency on their main page, but my first thought after reading it was a GNU-backed payment platform was "Stallman-bucks".

tedd4u• 4 years ago

"Stallbucks?"

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

Putting aside the problems inherent to all forms of non-physical cash, it's one of those projects that, if I had a few spare lifetimes, I'd volunteer to work on for free.

Perhaps the only credible, open, democratising, taxable, pseudonymous electronic approximation to actual "digital cash"?

recuter2• 4 years ago

That is a lot to put aside. Of course physical/legacy cash has its own problems. They are all the same problems at root though what with human nature being what it is.

You're simply eager to trade one set of problems for the other as nobody can stop you from writing software but you are not authorized to write laws.

Say you were god-emperor of the world with the power to redesign, and enforce, how physical cash and existing monetary/payments systems work in real life - it becomes a distinction without a difference.

Somehow - despite all the good intentions - we always end up with an eclectic mix of nerds reinventing wheels, self righteous power mad Che Guevara's, opportunistic grifters, and lottery players.

imtringued• 4 years ago

Obviously because that is how the system was designed. What did you expect? Without the ability to express negative interest rates the only way for the system to continue is through grifting.

I mean think about for a second. Positive rates mean more want to borrow than others want to save.

Negative rates mean less people want to borrow than others want to save.

If you don't think borrowers have a right to repay their debts then what exactly did people expect to happen? Are we supposed to blame debtors for their systematic inability to pay even though we decided they don't have the right to repay?

kybernetyk2• 4 years ago

taxable

nah thanks

Spivak• 4 years ago

If your vision for the future is a form of money that enables massive scale tax evasion you probably won’t get a whole lot of buy-in from the people with guns who are funded by taxes.

_alex_• 4 years ago

has anyone been able to withdraw taler tokens from the demo bank? Getting an error `could not find any exchange`. Don't think it's my setup.

prognu2• 4 years ago

Do you have a wallet v0.9.0? Which wallet are you using? Last I checked it worked fine with the Firefox wallet and the Android wallet.

codetrotter2• 4 years ago

Towards the end of the video, when talking about anonymity they use graphics associated with the loosely defined “Anonymous”.

I wonder what /g/ and /biz/ feel about GNU Taler. I feel like /g/ ought to like it. I don’t know if the opinion of /g/ and /biz/ on this matters anyway though :p The “Anonymous” graphics just got me to think of them.

Also it’s interesting to hear in the video that GNU Taler can work in conjunction with cryptocurrencies, while GNU Taler itself is not a cryptocurrency, and that GNU Taler does not add any additional volatility on top of the volatility of the underlaying payment currency itself. Makes me wonder if they have any resources on accepting payments in BTC or ETH using GNU Taler.

prognu2• 4 years ago

https://arbor.bfh.ch/17195/ describes how to accept BTC or ETH using GNU Taler.

cowtools3• 4 years ago

I have never seen /g/ discuss it outside of DigiCash's failure. In /biz/ there is a general sense of dread about anything related to "CBDCs". /biz/xmr has a more balanced opinion

You comment about cryptocurrency backed chaumian cash, there is already a project for this aimed at increasing the efficiency and privacy of bitcoin spends: https://fedimint.org/

doorman23• 4 years ago

GNU Taler seems totally obsoleted by something like Monero. Can anyone enlighten me on the advantages of Taler?

majewsky• 4 years ago

The T in Taler stands for "taxable", and that's a big difference. Depending on where you (or your government) stand on the spectrum between maximum privacy and maximum accountability, Taler may be a better fit than Monero.

psychphysic• 4 years ago

Taler does not even appear to come close.

It requires a central authority.

It seems distinctly less useful than bitcoin. And I despise bitcoin.

cowtools3• 4 years ago

Taler is superior to bitcoin because it implements sender-privacy.

cowtools3• 4 years ago

One is a chaumian cash system, the other is cryptocurrency with sender-obfuscation by ring-signatures.

The technical differences are too many for me to enumerate here. They are completely different technologies that make different efficiency-privacy-decentralization tradeoffs.

Functionally, Taler (and other forms of chaumian cash) are payment systems and not currencies. It requires a bank to implement it, in this sense it is less de-centralized, but likely much more efficient as there is no need for network consensus (because it depends on a central entity's blind signatures, etc. anyway). It has different (possibly better) privacy charichteristics than monero. They are both free and open source projects.

rglullis2• 4 years ago

It's the complete opposite. Taler wants to make decentralized transactions while keeping accountability and transparency. The idea of Taler is to have a system where buyers and sellers can have their data report to the authorities (at least what is needed for tax/compliance reasons) completely automatically.

doorman23• 4 years ago

You could do that with Monero as well. Ultimately, you would use a taxable system because you’re honest and want to pay taxes. So nothing about using Monero prevents the parties from reporting their transactions to tax authorities. Just as nothing prevents merchants from reporting their cash transactions.

luckylion• 4 years ago

If I understand correctly, only the recipient will be known, the sender will remain anonymous. Did I misunderstood the way it's supposed to work?

candiddevmike• 4 years ago

Taler is basically a framework for issuing something like a gift card

hrbf2• 4 years ago

”Chief moral officer” – is this some kind of weird in-joke or meant verbatim as stated? I don’t get it.

wmf• 4 years ago

It's not a joke. Taler is all about scolding crypto people for not paying taxes.

codetrotter2• 4 years ago

I took it more to mean that the role held by RMS is to ensure that Taler remains free software (as in freedom) as defined by FSF. He also mentions in the video that he is there to ensure that Taler remains free software (as in freedom). It is my impression that in the eyes of RMS and FSF, non-free software is immoral. And hence the title, I think.

version_five• 4 years ago

When I clicked the link, my browser (Brave on Android) gave a popup saying "did you mean taleo.net, lots of scam websites try and make similar names.

I've never seen a warning like that, but it's at least an interesting coincidence given Brave is vaguely crypto-scam focused. I don't know enough about either Brave or Taler to know of there is any overlap in their interests, it's more likely just a coincidence, but still odd

samatman• 4 years ago

With an edit distance of one from the suggested URL, it's more likely to be a misfire of a well-intentioned system.

Cilvic• 4 years ago

I'm interested in the business plan for Taler SA. I find it super cool to have a for-profit company provide a paid service with the open source software with the (non-profit) goal to promote the adoption of the software/system.

grothoff2• 4 years ago

Short version: see RedHat. Long version: contact us.

nerdponx• 4 years ago

But who are the customers for that business model? Central banks looking to roll out their own digital currency? companies involved with complicated supply chains that want to use some kind of pseudo-monetary credits for managing internal resources? payment processors that want to accept a cryptocurrency unburdened by a reputation for money laundering, sex trafficking, and drug dealing?

jesushax• 4 years ago

GNU Taler is developed as part of the GNU project for the GNU operating system.

Ha, yes, the GNU operating system. I appreciate GNU's commitment to this idea notion that they are developing an operating system (for which Linux is just the kernel)! And, I mean, I understand their thinking (I think). But it stills makes me chuckle for some reason.

nullc4• 4 years ago

Highly unethical project: It's a centralized digital cash premised on pervasive always-on surveillance. It's marketed by dishonest descriptions of how taxation regimes work or need to work in order to pretend that it's unprecedented surveillance is in any way normal or acceptable or useful for any purpose.

I stopped supporting FSF over their backing of this.

kube-system2• 4 years ago

As opposed to pretending that money laundering and tax evasion is normal or acceptable?

nullc4• 4 years ago

Do you also think that everyone who doesn't support a government installed camera in their bedroom is pretending that raping children is acceptable?

GNU Taler is an unprecedented mass surveillance system.

teddyh• 4 years ago

How is it centralized? All the descriptions of GNU Taler calls it decentralized.

pervasive always-on surveillance

What is surveilled, except for the amount an anonymous entity has paid you?

I stopped supporting FSF over their backing of this.

So this was six years ago?

nullc4• 4 years ago

How is it centralized?

The system is a simple chauvinism digital cash with integrated surveillance. All transactions in the system must be cleared by a centralized server that checks against double spends and validates that each transaction contains the required key-escrowed surveillance data.

All the descriptions of GNU Taler calls it decentralized.

Unethical actors like the creators of GNU Taler are willing to lie. Surprise.

So this was six years ago?

In 2016, I believe, yes.

eukara• 4 years ago

Massive potential here. They're not asking for much either.

Taler Systems SA is looking for investors for development of GNU Taler

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