Comment by warkdarrior
19 hours ago
The announcement claims a "privacy-preserving [...] payment system". Are you saying this would come in conflict with German law?
19 hours ago
The announcement claims a "privacy-preserving [...] payment system". Are you saying this would come in conflict with German law?
Taler is privacy-preserving for the payer, but not for the payee. This solves many legal issues such as tax evasion and money laundering.
I think it is the European sense of privacy where the government is implicitly inside everyone's trust circle.
no
it's a practical doable improvement to the existing system in the existing legal framework
the outcome might be similar but there is a big difference in intend and framing there
I think Taler is designed to be privacy-preserving while being able to comply with national laws. So not the currency you're looking for if you wanna buy something illegal.
Nor something that you want to remain private.
I think the proper comparison point is not something like Monero, but multinational credit card companies. Taler is obviously much more private than those.
private from whom
large companies, that should work
the state if it does an criminal investigation, that won't work, also at least for now there is no need to do so if you don't to anything criminal. Sure if fascists take over that would change but they then also would ban any system which would allow avoiding their gaze so not sure it's relevant tbh.
and as things are currently you have to far more worry about US companies and state knowing about what transactions which are legal but you want to keep private then about your local EU government
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Sounds like that's the only thing it's good for. As far as I can understand it's designed so the merchant has to report it in order to verify it exists. I find it really hard to understand, but I think the thing I'm missing is that the person who buys Taler in the first place simply has to trust the issuer - because they can't verify that they've actually received any without leaving a record i.e. becoming a merchant who is receiving Taler in exchange for cash.
So if you get Taler from your bank and spend it somewhere, the government can see it at your bank, and they can see it where it was spent, but they don't see you at all. You've done your trusting out of band.
If that's right, it could still be used for illegal and untaxed transactions if the entire chain was trusting out of band. I could use it to buy drugs without paying taxes if by dealer would be happy to shoot me later if they couldn't spend it at a retailer, rather than to check if it was good.
I still don't understand it. I've tried periodically for years, but I'm missing something.
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