
GNU Taler 0.0.0 released - Prygan
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/taler/2016-06/msg00014.html
======
vessenes
I don't have time for a full write up of this system yet, and a paper would be
really great.

That said, here are to me the most salient points:

* Exchanges (essentially banks in Taler) must have external auditing; there are no in-built technology mechanisms for noticing or defeating over-issuance

* HTTP/HTTPS focused -- this is intended to be an API-layer tool

* Token based, so you could use it with any system you want

* Government audit friendly -- it tries for high levels of privacy for users and almost none for merchants as a conscious decision to be bad for money laundering.

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kybernetyk
>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn
their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income
taxes

Wow, what a feature ...

~~~
Frondo
Indeed, that is an excellent feature.

Money transfers without the banks, but I can potentially get buy-in from my
government and use it to pay my taxes (which I am happy to pay, because I am
buying civilization with it)?

Sign me up!

~~~
exstudent2
It's funny that you think you're buying civilization with your taxes when the
vasty majority of the money you give the government is used to actively
_destroy_ civilization. Bombs aren't cheap.

~~~
sbierwagen
Vast majority? Military spending is only 15.75% of the US federal budget. And
that's just federal spending, citizens also pay taxes to states and
municipalities, which rarely field combat aircraft.

~~~
miles
While military spending (not counting veterans' benefits) in 2015 was around
16% of the total US federal budget[1,2], it made up 53.71% of the
discretionary spending budget, dwarfing the next closest category,
"government", at 6.54%.

From the BusinessInsider link below:

" _The military budget is by far the largest single cost displayed. It is
almost six times larger than the 2015 education budget and it is more than 34
times the size of NASA 's 2015 operating budget. In total, the costs of
running the military amount to approximately 16% of the overall 2015 US
budget._"

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-defense-budget-is-
mass...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-defense-budget-is-
massive-2015-8)

[2] [https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
bud...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-
budget-101/spending/)

~~~
azernik
And discretionary spending is a useful metric... why? Your taxes go to funding
both discretionary and non-discretionary spending, so of your tax money, yes,
military spending is only around 16%.

------
nwalfield
Taler is quite different from, say, bitcoin in that it tries to enable
taxation while preserving anonymity. The main webpage has more info:
[https://www.taler.net/](https://www.taler.net/) . Unfortunately, it doesn't
appear that a paper has been published yet. But, there are a couple of
presentations at [https://taler.net/news](https://taler.net/news) .

------
kriro
From reading their page and watching a talk I don't quite get how they merge
taxation and anonymity. As I understand it what individual transactions are
for is protected but the total money flows are available and thus taxable? I
take it they have categories (capital gains, income) etc. attached to the
money streams since they are taxed differently in most countries? That would
open the possibility to do some metadata/timing etc. analysis and at least
some of that anonymity would get leaked. I would also have to prove somehow
that this transaction was for example a capital gains transaction etc.
Similarly I don't see how sales taxes are handled. That would require a
somewhat specific location identifier on my part, would it not (in the U.S.
you'd need to provide your state)? I'm also not sure how tax deductions would
work. For those I usually have to turn in receipts and declare why the content
of the items is relevant for the work.

Let's say I want to buy a book that I think could be flagged for political
reasons and would want to keep the fact that I bought that book secret. I'd
still have to prove that it was purchase of an item (possibly even indicating
a book depending on how complicated the tax code is).

It feels like in practice it would be a rather soft layer of anonymity. I
don't know I feel like I just don't get how taxation and anonymity can be
merged as soon as the tax code gets complicated a lot of information needs to
be leaked.

------
codewiz
Reading Taler's website ([https://www.taler.net/](https://www.taler.net/)) it
is not clear to me whether customer and merchant must agree to use the same
exchange in order to perform a transaction.

It seems to be implied by the key interactions of a Merchant: "Create a
reserve based on an incoming wire transfer from a customer" and "Execute wire
transfers to merchants in response to validated deposits".

If this is indeed the case, then there's an attractor towards centralization:
both customers and merchants will be forced to sign up with the dominant
exchange for maximum interoperability.

Either exchanges are given an incentive to federate with zero friction for
users, or the Taler network will inevitably become a centralized monopoly.

~~~
Allezxandre
I understood the website the same way you did: the merchant must use the same
exchange as the customer. I hope we're wrong.

For the sake of anonymity though, it appears to me that using a new exchange
would be easy as you would not require to log in with an email and a password,
but rather with a kind of web-browser extension or something similar. Each
merchant could then become its own exchange, and you would only see a few big
exchanges whose role would just be to make everything simpler for the
merchant, and that simplicity would come at the price of an increased fee.
This is a bit like what PayPal or Stripe are doing today.

------
programLyrique
Previous discussion worth reading about Taler on HN a few months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258312)

------
brianolson
Title should say something about what "Taler" is. It's obviously brand new. A
post about ffmpeg 67.9.5 might assume that there's more knowledge in the world
about what "ffmpeg" is.

~~~
rocky1138
While I agree with you, Thaler is the origin of the word Dollar.

~~~
tremon
Not all of us use the Dollar as our primary currency, and probably fewer of us
are etymologists.

~~~
WildUtah
_fewer of us are etymologists_

But think how useful it would be in an emergency if we were.

[https://xkcd.com/1012/](https://xkcd.com/1012/)

------
yarrel
I'm pro-taxation, but cryptocurrency with built-in state surveillance doesn't
seem like a good combination.

~~~
gwildor
I'm generally against state surveillance, but how else would you properly tax?

~~~
branchless
By taxing land!!!!!

~~~
frozenport
This will make land ownership harder, which is a regressive measure and will
further income inequality. Land and home-ownership represent significant steps
towards generational wealth, because when you are paying off a mortgage you
own the home while in the case of a lease you own nothing.

Literally, this you are advocating economic policy from the Ancien Régime.

~~~
aninhumer
It also makes it hard for existing landowners to own land, so they're more
inclined to sell it, lowering the prices for everyone.

Also, even if you rent, your landlord is paying the tax, so they'll pass the
cost on to you anyway.

------
MatthewWilkes
So, semver is great and all, but 0.0.x releases just look silly, in my
opinion. I've never seen someone zero index the least significant column
before though, which makes it look even worse.

Would people actually expect w piece of software marked as version 0.0.0 to be
anything more than a placeholder?

~~~
cornstalks
It's funny that programmers treat zero-indexing arrays and things as normal
(even "correct"), but suddenly zero-indexing versions is something wacky.
What's weird to me is that 0.0.0 isn't more common in the developer world,
given how frequently we start counting from 0.

~~~
dunkelheit
I find 0.0.x versions wacky too. Version numbers (in contrast to array
subscripts) are only useful in relation to previous version numbers. Ideally
when a new version of the software I use comes out I can decide whether to
upgrade only by comparing the version number with the one I use. E.g. in
semver increased minor number means "new functionality added". So when 0.0.0
version comes out, what does it mean, compared to the absence of software? No
functionality at all? :)

~~~
cornstalks
What does 0.0.1 mean, compared to the absence of software? You can't compare
0.0.1 to anything if there's no other previous release.

Starting at 0.0.1 is at least just as arbitrary as starting at 0.0.0, and your
aversion to starting at 0.0.0 suggests you're making implicit assumptions
about what the non-existent 0.0.0 means when starting at 0.0.1. But if 0.0.0
doesn't even exist then you can't really make any assumptions about it.

At least 0.0.0 is clearly the very first version of something. Starting at
0.0.1 doesn't make clear that there isn't an earlier 0.0.0.

~~~
MatthewWilkes
For me, personally, 1.0.0 feels right as the first version. Compared to
nothing, the first release is a major and there have been no minors.

I guess I don't really see version numbers as indexes but as cardinals, hence
why leading zeroes seem weird to me.

------
zmanian
Is there any document or talk that really explains how all the crypto pieces
fit together?

------
technofiend
This is cool but if you do look at where big investments are being made it's
more in smart contract/block chain. Considering the extreme regulatory and DOJ
pressure to expose all parties in any fiduciary transaction I'm skeptical
we'll ever see an explicitly government-approved system with anonymity.

~~~
internaut
> I'm skeptical we'll ever see an explicitly government-approved system with
> anonymity.

Me too but I also think that it's increasingly not possible to scale up a
governance system without anonymity.

Suppose you have a list of incumbents that will pay you off to kill
competition, and a list of new entities that affect those incumbents. That's a
recipe for stasis and stagnation. Arguably this has already occurred in the
medical arena on multiple levels.

You need a 'fog of war' to allow innovation to occur. Otherwise you're
depending on the goodwill, patriotism or honesty of officials, things that
could dry up when you most need them. I suppose this could also be used as an
argument for limited protectionism and incubation.

------
gcb0
gnu devs peomoting chrome. im surprised. I would have expected "only tested on
iceweasel" .

------
Tharkun
The name is rather poorly chosen, given that thousands of banks use Thaler
(with an H) to handle their payments...

------
kensai
Is there a white paper of the protocol somewhere?

------
homero
Selling my bitcoin now!

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etatoby
If you consider how much money is embezzled / stolen by (most) corporations by
avoiding paying taxes for all the services they benefit from, in the countries
they operate in, this seems a very good feature.

~~~
fiatjaf
Yeah, because it would be much better if none of these companies existed.

~~~
jug
Did the parent imply that?

~~~
fiatjaf
Yes, of course.

~~~
ball_of_lint
No, it implied it would be better for them to pay their taxes.

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legulere
"electronic payment system providing anonymity [...] in any existing currency"

This sounds pretty much like money laundering to me.

