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.
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.
Is Taler decentralized?
The digital exchange seems to be centralised.
This is even worse that the current system as it essentially means flat tax regardless of your income. This means a poor person is paying the same income tax through purchasing items at a store who will be on the hook for the taxes so naturally will pass on to you and at the same time a rich person will pay the same price and tax. Further since it is centralized all the same issues of corruption and exploitation exist even if the intent today is good.
Homie you just described sales taxes which are already a thing
as a contractor if the state could just transparently handle my sales tax that would greatly simplify my life/business/tax and greatly reduce the fear that im fucking it up somehow.
The approach to taxing isn’t determined by this tool, but by the government. What this tool tries to prevent is hidden money exchanges, which affect both methods of taxing, not only flat taxes but also income-based taxes (since a hidden sale is giving the seller a hidden income and potentially placing them at a lower income tax class).
Somewhat
What is decentralized?
Your currency is stored locally on your device and transferred directly to the merchant when transacting. The marchant software can also be selfhosted. It just has to communicate with with the centralized exchange for deposit into traditional bank accounts.
https://www.taler.net/en/features.html
It says “Payments are made after exchanging existing money into electronic money with the help of an Exchange service, that is, a payment service provider for Taler.”
Do they say anywhere who that payment service provider is? And are there options for who to use?
Its centralized you mean, and is at the whims of the creator. Like comparing a scarce asset like Pokémon card to gold
So the blockchain supporting $Trump makes it so much more trustworthy?
Just because it’s built on a block chain doesn’t mean they relinquished control and decentralized it. But it’s a platform that allows you to decentralize.
Is this worth it as an upgrade to our existing centrally controlled currency? That’s a different discussion.
Does it solve the problem blockchain provides a solution for? Does it allow for decentralization? It appears the answer is no.
And we are still waiting for a problem that blockchain can fix.
If you don’t think centralized currency controlled by neo-liberal capitalist states isn’t a problem to solve, we aren’t even in the same plane here.
And you think blockchain fixes that? Lol.
Bitcoin is pretty fucking centralized right now.
It already did fix it. See OWS and wikileaks and the hong Kong protests.
All were able to get instant international donations from allies while the big banks shut down their donations (eg PayPal, swift, wechat, etc)
I’m pretty sure it was centralized currencies.
Decentralized currencies will only actually make sense when the material incentives of our economic system would benefit from them. Capitalism is literally all about concentrating the control of capital and the means by which we produce things. Sadly, decentralized currencies will never be allowed to decouple themselves from these economic systems. There is too much material power to prevent that. And by material power I mean literally the enforcement of these concentrations of wealth through the use of violence.
The tech is cool. But it doesn’t magically solve the problem by simply being invented. It’s why no one is actually paying with these cryptocurrencies on anything but an extremely small scale.
A currency that cannot be manipulated by capitalist for their benefit has no place in our world. So, it will never reach any meaningful real use until those structures are dismantled. It will just continue to be a speculative asset that rich people dump their extra wealth into and poor people play as the lottery.
Yes I agree with this completely. Ethically-minded libertarian capitalists who have convinced themselves that bitcoin will neuter the ability of the state to commit violence are either fooling themselves or haven’t bothered to step back a bit to examine the nature of power. I was just pointing out that bitcoin does provide a way for a money to be managed in a decentralized and automated fashion. That’s the actual technological novelty that a blockchain enables, and IMO that is the only novelty is can or will provide. As all money does in capitalism though, yes it will continue top concentrate and cause harm.
To your point, bitcoin is already centralized around 1% of wallets.
It’s not really decentralized when 1% of people control the value at will.
The data on these things is completely unreliable. Wallets are opened and dumped at will. I don’t think that you’re really wrong. It is likely very concentrated. But I know that there is no reliable way of actually coming to this statistic.
We’re referring to decentralized management, not decentralized distribution. Fortunately I don’t think anyone in this thread is pretending that any kind of money is going to make the world better.
That’s a social problem that technology can’t fix.
That’s like saying a HDD is bad because someone can put CP on it.
Edit: CP rhymes with “Mild Corn”.
Nah it’s a shitty tech that everyone wants to make happen. It could completely disappear and the tech world.would be no worse off in any way at all. The world could do without it’s absurd draw on resources. And yes I am aware that the large power draw from mining is mostly gone. It’s idle resource usage is sad
wtf does that even mean
A blockchain is a ledger. They’re talking about the distributed public ledger of all the histrionic transactions of the trump shitcoin
I think that has a premine. So its a scam