GNU Taler v0.9.0 Released (opens in new tab)

I think physical wallets might be a requirement for crypto technologies to really go mainstream. Not because of any security reasons, but because it makes it easier for the average person to understand why if they lose their private key their money/data/etc is gone. It's hard to communicate this with software wallets when every other system people use has recovery mechanisms.

Looks interesting, is it really 100% anonymous and private for the customer? Can any merchant from any country register to receive money as long as they follow tax law from their own country, or is it subject to sanctions and things like that? Could be a nice method to reach countries like Syria now that they are suffering after the earthquake but many populations aren't allowed to help them because of sanctions.

Could somebody explains or points out a ressource explaining how GNU Taler solves the double-spending problem ? Or what the design is ?

In the traditional model (banks/credit cards), you simply sign a transaction that the receiver bank will then later handle to your bank. You let bank figure out how to transfer the money. Banks are basically a huge excel sheet with all the balances of customers. To avoid banks artificially adding numbers in the excel sheet, we rely on regulations (the fact that it works or not is besides the discussion here)

In the cryptocurrency, you share that huge excel sheet and each transaction is a modification that should be approved by the majority of users. Unlike banks, it is now proved that it works and you cannot manipulate the excel sheet, meaning you don’t need regulation anymore (whether this is a good thing or not is besides the discussion here. Just stating facts).

So my question: with GNU Taller, who maintain that huge excel sheet?

Are there any Taler exchanges that allow you to transfer real currency into Taler? The current website makes it sound like Taler is now a working service in the present, rather than a promising technology in development (which is how I've always thought of it), but I can't figure out how to use it other than the toy currency demo.

This project never made any sense. Move on.

This is from (2022)

0.9.1 was released a few weeks ago:

https://taler.net/en/news/2023-01.html

Glad to see GNU Taler continuing to make progress. Their focus on banks is nice but given the current regulatory posture in the US it seems like digital cash won't be inside banks any time soon.

Disclaimer: I built https://webcash.org/ as something people can use immediately. It has some important differences from Taler and it's not quite the same, nor using the Chaumian blinding technique and not backed by an institution or "peg".