
GNU Taler – Electronic payments for a liberal society - Sami_Lehtinen
http://taler.net/
======
ijktdot
This is a digital payment scheme that respects the customers privacy, when
buying from merchants. The alternative besides a cryptocurrency, would be a
prepaid cc you buy with cash in a store, but then VISA knows everything you
buy with it, whereas this system the payment provider (the "mint") and
merchant are separated. If you directly buy things with SEPA then your bank
knows everything you buy. This allows for lawful payments, allows any company
to become a mint (no payment monopolies) and is free software so you can make
your own wallet client and not have to rely on proprietary software wallet
apps.

People can still become a black market escrow, keep creating new merchants and
facilitate user to user transactions unless there is some kind of cost or
identification required to accept Taler payments, or exchange Taler for
bitcoin. US law makers will likely try to prohibit Taler though if any online
gambling accepts it as payment, for example Paysafecard had to design a
special UIGEA compliant card in order for it not to be able to be plugged into
a gambling site to get into the US payments market.

Speaking of bitcoin pretty much every online exchange will start accepting
Taler, then they aren't so exposed to banks shutting them down and can trade
in any currency.

------
limmeau
This sounds a lot like David Chaum's eCash of the 90s. You transfer ordinary
money into a Taler account in a Taler bank and transfer them to other Taler
accounts, and from there to ordinary money. That's unlike Bitcoin in pretty
much every respect.

It takes some courage to make a crypto-payment protocol explicitly taxation-
friendly, but they claim the tax man only gets to see the amounts, not the
identities. What a pity the design doc isn't yet on their website.

And I hope the eCash patents have expired...

~~~
Someone
For those who don't know about DigiCash:

[http://www.chaum.com](http://www.chaum.com)

[http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm](http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum)

[http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chau...](http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chaum.BlindSigForPayment.1982.PDF)

------
hackuser
Consider how valuable this could be to privacy.

Governments likely will insist on a mechanism to track electronic currencies,
for tax, regulatory and other reasons. Governments seem to have very little
concern for privacy. So the mechanism they choose could very well ignore
privacy.

By building a mechanism that meets government needs and by being an early
mover, Taler could be the de facto solution by the time governments get around
to dealing with this issue, and could make privacy the policy.

~~~
ijktdot
There's a global racket in market data mining too, to track demographics and
see what they are buying. This system defeats any large payment entity from
payment tracking.

Taler can also compete with Ukash, since it's free/open any merchant can
implement their own Taler for cash business without signing large exclusive
contracts with Ukash or waiting a month to be settled by them, as you can
freely choose which Mint to do business with.

~~~
zerebubuth
> This system defeats any large payment entity from payment tracking.

Merchants of physical goods must know the identity and delivery address of
their customers in order to deliver them. Given how easy many companies find
it to embed 3rd party trackers or adverts on their site, it seems reasonable
to believe that they will also find it easy to sell this data ("to help detect
and prevent fraud") to the payment processing companies.

~~~
ijktdot
True, but at least Taler allows for the consumer to chose merchants who
specify they don't sell data. Right now I can't buy anything online and not be
tracked by the payment provider unless I use bitcoin. The prepaid credit cards
here all require online registration and in store identification, Visa/Mc/Amex
then track my purchases. If I show ID to buy $200 worth of Taler in a 7-11,
there's no way for my Taler provider to see what I used it for.

~~~
hackuser
> Right now I can't buy anything online and not be tracked by the payment
> provider unless I use bitcoin

Here are a couple of solutions I've seen but haven't tried:

* Masked Cards by Abine (a privacy service): Abine gives you a card to use and you pay Abine. Obviously, you'll need to trust Abine.

[https://dnt.abine.com/#feature/payments](https://dnt.abine.com/#feature/payments)

* PaySafeCard: A prepaid card; "You don't have to enter any personal information or bank account or credit card details. Your privacy remains completely protected at all times with paysafecard!"

[https://www.paysafecard.com/en-us/](https://www.paysafecard.com/en-us/)

------
choffman
No thank you. With regards to my government, I would like to see more privacy
rather than less. This seems to give me less.

I do like the idea of complete transactional privacy between end users and/or
merchants. But we already have this today with CryptoNote based
cryptocurrencies like Monero - with optional transparency through "view keys".

~~~
room271
As far as I understand it, Taler seems to be great for privacy __and __society
(ensuring income is taxable). Governments can 't see how you spend your money,
but they can see who receives payments.

Bitcoin and others will never succeed because they are too friendly towards
illicit behaviour. Taler seems to strike a genuinely interesting and ethical
balance here.

~~~
dnautics
The underlying assumption is that governments don't care about how you spend
money. This is patently untrue, because "liberal" governments explicitly use
taxation as global social modification schemes, for all sorts of things beyond
income redistribution - from minimizing percieved vices (alcohol, tobacco) to
minimizing environmental footprint, etc.

The idea that this sort of activity is able to be decoupled from surveillance
is one of the more unfortunate delusions in politics.

~~~
notvladputin
Why did you specify liberal governments (is this not something all governments
do?), and put it in quotes?

~~~
oberstein
Other less liberal governments will simply ban something they consider sinful
instead of try to make money off it while letting their populace (who they are
supposed to care about) slide into hell (if the thing is truly sinful).
Historically this doesn't work so well in the US, but in other places like
Singapore it works better.

~~~
vacri
Not true at all. Conservative governments often desire things like trade
protection tariffs. They may ban 'immoral' things rather than merely tax them
differently, but they are still very interested in controlling the flow of
money.

------
pakled_engineer
Uses GNUnet's crypto library to generate keys. Biggest problem I've found is
fraud potential, the mint operator can run a fractional reserve since it
relies on "government authorities doing regular audits" and also that it touts
turning Mastercard/Visa into Taler. Carders will become their own merchants,
card a mint to get Taler and then cash it all out before anybody knows what
happened. You also can't transfer Taler p2p, all transactions go through the
mint to prevent "black markets".

Edit: Uses this API [http://api.taler.net/](http://api.taler.net/) plus seems
to have future GNUnet compatibility built into it's system for payments over
it.

~~~
limmeau
Does it use GNUnet? I only see them mention REST here, HTTPS there.

As to the carder-friendlyness: credit card companies are known to treat
payment aggregators with lots of suspicion, so I suppose there just won't be
many credit-card-to-Taler "banks".

------
davorb
> Taler ensures that governments can easily track their citizen's income

So exactly why would I want to use this?

~~~
radmuzom
Because unless the government can track citizen's income it cannot tax it, and
without taxes modern society cannot function at all.

Technologies like this would be a boon to many developing countries like mine
where tax evasion and corruption is rampant. It would enable the government to
collect funds for infrastructure, education, environmental protection and
healthcare (and yes, I am a progressive liberal who would rather have the
government provide these at subsidized cost rather than private entities; even
at the cost of "efficiency" if need be).

~~~
dublinben
The question remains, why would anyone choose to use a system like this?
Wealthy individuals and companies (aka those with most of the money) have a
vested interest in having their transactions _not_ easily tracked by the
government.

~~~
pzone
Simple: this aims for regulatory support. If Taler (or a system like Taler) is
embraced by governments, and is therefore given the full support of the
financial system, Bitcoin could be permanently relegated to black-market-only
use.

~~~
keyboardwarrior
Why would we want bitcoin to be relegated to a black market only use?

Bitcoin is more valid money then paper currency. we can directly verify the
creation of the transaction.

------
pornel
From the description it seems like "GNU PayPal" or "XMPP for Stripe".

To me it seems quite desirable: a decentralized protocol for sending
government-backed money in a way that is legal (strong crypto isn't protection
from being arrested for money laundering), and yet offers better privacy and
is more open to competition than existing networks of banks/credit
cards/PayPal.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> From the description it seems like "GNU PayPal" or "XMPP for Stripe.

The name itself screams "money": a taler is a thaler is a dollar and they all
come from from the valley of Saint Joachim (Joachimsthal) where they had a
silver mine. You may thank the Holy Roman Empire for making good coinage.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler)

------
benwerd
This is the most political open source project I've seen in a while. I love
the idea that it's designed to sit inside a progressive society where we all
agree we have a social contract to the state. That is _very_ different to a
lot of similar efforts, and at the very least it's an important part of the
discussion.

Right now it's vaporware, but I'm very interested in its release. I'd love to
help give it a friendly face and integrate it with existing open source social
platforms, to make it easier to send and receive money regardless of your
technical ability.

~~~
plutooo
Where is this social contract? What are its terms and where is my signature?

~~~
rtkwe
In the case of modern countries: The contract is the law + the Constitution
(or your local equivalent if not in the US) and your signature is living in
and benefiting from the nation/society you live in.

------
plutooo
From [http://taler.net/governments](http://taler.net/governments)

> _Thus, Taler will enable competition and avoid the monopolization of payment
> systems that threatens global political and financial stability today._

The irony.

------
pervycreeper
I'm not sure how desirable the new features are compared to existing
currencies. It also doesn't seem any freer. Don't know what the association
with GNU entails. Furthermore, its name is easily confused with the ancient
denomination of "Thaler", I guess it's on purpose, but, once again, maybe not
the greatest idea.

If they want to centralize a currency, perhaps that would be better done by a
government or other experienced institution.

~~~
saalweachter
As near as I can tell, they aren't trying to be a digital currency, just a
digital payment system.

This is really an iteration on PayPal (and similar businesses): the new
feature is that it is a system for letting multiple PayPals compete. Instead
of being forced to make an account with a specific company, you can pick from
a hopefully-large number of mints, who will be competing on things like fees
and the customer experience. That will hopefully make things suck less.

BitCoin solves a lot of problems most people don't care about. Most people
don't care about Byzentine Generals or trustless transactions or very limited
forms of anonymity. What most people care about are low-cost transactions
which don't suck. We'll have to wait and see if Taler can actually deliver.

~~~
pervycreeper
>a digital payment system

Existing cryptocurrencies already perform this function well. If that's the
sole claimed advantage of Taler, it's a step backwards.

~~~
saalweachter
Cryptocurrencies (by which I mean, Bitcoin, since it is the one with
significant adoption) perform this function, but not particularly _well_.

For a payment system, being a currency is a negative -- fluctuations between
the value of the digital currency and the value of the currency goods are
priced in is a headache few people enjoy.

A payment system that is set up as a payment system -- instead of a
decentralized trustless network -- can also better optimize things like
transaction time (transactions can happen ~instantly if you're willing to
trust central agencies) or having a known transaction cost. Right now
Bitcoin's transaction cost is ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ -- some combination of inflation from
printing money to pay the miners and direct payments to the miners per
transaction and payments to the exchanges to put cash in or take cash out and
the risk of currency fluctuations mid-transaction. Regardless of whether it
costs a little more or a little less, just _knowing_ the transaction cost is a
huge benefit to consumers and merchants.

------
wyager
Why, as a rational actor, would I voluntarily choose this system over one that
gives me the freedom to decide what the government sees about my spending?

~~~
bildung
_> Why, as a rational actor, would I voluntarily choose this system over one
that gives me the freedom to decide what the government sees about my
spending?_

Because this system ensures fair play of all participants, therefore making
cooperative behaviour the rational choice, therefore enabling more efficient
solutions on a societal level.

Proper game theory (which I assume you were referring to) is bit more complex
than the prisoner's dilemma.

~~~
wyager
It doesn't ensure fair play of the most powerful participant (the government),
and it doesn't ensure fair play of people who have the knowledge or material
means to escape surveillance.

------
oneJob
Much love and respect to Richard Stallman / the GNU Project for all the
pioneering work and advocacy they did in OSS, but I personally don't want them
near my $s. The number of religious / flame wars persistently raging in OSS
circles just can not, would not be tolerated in this domain.

~~~
paxcoder
Your comment is completely baseless FUD, I wonder if you actually believe it.

P.S. Stallman is a FS advocate, not an OSS advocate.

~~~
oneJob
Ah, trolling a comment that is anti-flamewars. so meta-cool!

Sorry, FS, that was indeed my mistake.

~~~
paxcoder
You're still not making any sense.

------
JulianMorrison
Lets make it quite simple.

If you can't mail order LSD with it, in privacy, then it's too submissive to
the state.

------
mindcrime
_Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can easily
track their citizen 's income and thus collect sales, value-added or income
taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the black
market._

Sounds pretty useless to me then. I would think, as technologists, we would
adhere to a mindset of "we can do better". That is, we can do better than
basing our society on a State apparatus that is rooted in the use of violence
(or threat, implied or otherwise) of violence, to coerce people into following
its dictates. Taxation is damage that we should be creating ways to route
around, not something we should be building tools to support.

~~~
rodgerd
I will take nonsense like this seriously when its proponents no longer avail
themselves of the benefits of assets created through taxation. Which would be
never.

~~~
evanpw
This is just the reverse of the (also bad) argument that people who advocate
for higher taxes shouldn't be taken seriously unless they voluntarily donate
some of their income to the government. For example:
[http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/04/want-higher-
tax...](http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/04/want-higher-taxes-pay-
them-yourself/).

~~~
Spivak
Thus taxes should never change as people would rationally never want to pay
more nor receive less benefits. Hence we must have exactly the right amount of
taxation at all times.

------
omouse
_Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can easily
track their citizen 's income and thus collect sales, value-added or income
taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the black
market._

HAH, I love it, they lump both BitCoin _and cash!_ as currencies fit for the
black market! I wonder how cash-only convenience stores will feel about that,
those outlaw troublemakers! ;p

------
dacox
> Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can easily
> track their citizen's income and thus collect sales, value-added or income
> taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the
> black market.

This simultaneously implies that both Bitcoin _and_ cash are not suitable for
the mainstream economy. I think the opinion that cash should be given up would
be fairly controversial, even today. Furthermore, a law abiding citizen will
still pay taxes on their Bitcoin income - the same way they would for cash.
Just because Bitcoin makes it harder to prove tax evasion doesn't mean we
should eschew Bitcoin and cash. The technology exists regardless, governments
will have to adapt.

> When you pay with Taler, your identity does not have to be revealed to the
> merchant. The bank, government and mint will also never learn how you spent
> your electronic money. However, you can prove that you paid in court if
> necessary.

This feature is offering nothing not already available, although it seems to
imply that one could not prove payment with Bitcoin, which is false, as it is
trivial.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This simultaneously implies that both Bitcoin and cash are not suitable for
> the mainstream economy.

No, it implies that Bitcoin and cash are both alike in not simultaneously
being:

(a) suitable for the mainstream economy, and (b) not suitable for the black
market.

It neither states nor strongly implies which of those two things bitcoin or
cash fail on (nor does it state or strongly apply that they each fail on the
_same_ one of those two things), though there's a fairly weak implication that
Bitcoin and cash both fail on the second (that, whether or not they are
suitable for the mainstream economy, they are quite suitable for the black
market.)

------
atmosx
I have this strange idea that once the government-agents really understand
what e-payments, even block-chain-powered e-currencies bring to the table, in
terms of money control, they'll embrace it. It's a no-brainer.

That said, taxes are not inherently bad. Governments on the other hand... Have
an awfully bad track-record of power abuse.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Several central banks are interested in cryptocurrencies because it allows
them to devalue the currency from a central point. Cash is hard because it can
be hoarded, therefore indirect measures are taken to devalue said currency.

[http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=27870](http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=27870)

[http://in.rbth.com/economics/finance/2015/09/21/rusias-
bitru...](http://in.rbth.com/economics/finance/2015/09/21/rusias-bitruble-to-
be-worlds-first-state-controlled-cryptocurrency_426465)

[http://cointelegraph.com/news/115312/azerbaijan-mulls-its-
ow...](http://cointelegraph.com/news/115312/azerbaijan-mulls-its-own-
cryptocurrency-cryptomanat)

~~~
AndrewBissell
"If the controls we've imposed aren't working to revive the economy, it must
mean we need to use new and ever more intrusive ones!"

~~~
toomuchtodo
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.”

Seriously. You have an aging population causing consumption to decline, a
global recession along the horizon, ever-increasing productivity replacing the
need for labor, and you think your interest rates are going to a damn bit of
good? We'll need to keep interest rates at 0 just to keep the whole thing
going, forget about negative interest rates (which is going to cause a run on
the bank and asset bubbles in commodities, real estate, anything else that can
be a value store).

------
e12e
Not sure how one can both have traceability with merchants and: "However, we
also want to stay out of the immediate personal domain, so sharing funds
within a family or copying coins between devices should not be subject to
monitoring by the state."

I'm guessing this means that you have either "free" trust (help from the
thaler system to ensure fair transactions), or "no" trust -- essentially you
hand over cash, and hope the other party gives you goods in return?

I have a hard time seeing how you could prevent "anonymous transfer of coins"
from one device from the other -- across the Internet (provided the parties
are prepared to risk fraud)?

------
zby
So inflows (their amounts) are public (i.e taxable), but outflows are not?

Interesting claim.

------
jerguismi
Taxable & anonymous at the same time? The marketing of this sounds shady. I
don't know if the "inventors" or whatever really know what they are doing...

~~~
omouse
It's in development at a university that's known for its computer science
research and work: [http://www.inria.fr/](http://www.inria.fr/)

For example, Facebook has partnered with the university and it's also the
birthplace of the OCAML language. They have some sharp people doing research
work there, if this was a VC-backed company or a kickstarter, I would be much
more skeptical and think it's shady. However, the bar at a university is much
higher so we'll see what they do deliver and how it works whenever they
deliver it in the next year.

~~~
blumkvist
TU Munich too!

------
lifeisstillgood
Is it just me - I cannot understand how it works? There are diagrams and
explanations about banks and wallets but no actual "how"?

------
placeybordeaux
I don't understand why people seem to constantly associate bitcoin with tax
free. There are no inherent reasons why cash transactions are taxable or non-
taxable, it just turns out that people don't want to be destroyed by the IRS
so they make an effort to pay their taxes.

~~~
e12e
There's also the aspect of currency vs goods. If I've understood correctly,
bitcoin is taxed as (virtual) goods in Norway, meaning that if you make money
from price change, the tax is much higher than it would be for making money
off of stock/currency etc (which would be 28% off the profit, or a 28%
deduction from the loss). Just because some people would _like_ bitcoin to be
a currency doesn't make it so (in the eyes of the taxman).

I'm not sure how/if thaler would change that -- but it's worth keeping in mind
that "new" assets will be taxed according to how the government thinks it
should be taxed, not according to how you might feel it should be taxed.

------
scythe
What's crucially important, and conspicuously unmentioned, is not taxes but
monetary policy as a whole: can the central bank (or "mint") control the
interest rate? Is inflation possible?

~~~
icebraining
It's right on the home page:

 _Taler uses an electronic mint holding financial reserves in existing
currencies. This means that Taler is not a new currency with the inherent
currency fluctuation risks, but instead the cryptographic coins correspond to
existing currencies, such as US Dollars, Euros or even BitCoins._

So, yes, inflation is possible, since the digital coins are tied to existing
currencies.

------
davout
sounds like a shitty version of OpenTransactions

~~~
VMG
even shittier?

------
yarrel
This seems to bake in some curious assumptions.

------
internetpeso
This is good but how does it compare to internetpeso.com?

~~~
chriswarbo
That site seems to give no details about how internetpeso works; it confuses
"how does it work?" with "how do I use it?".

Also, Taler seems to be very much a Free Software project. internetpeso seems
to be proprietary, and also self-contradictory:

> Other cyber-currencies require that you trust complete strangers to verify
> transactions. This is a patently unsafe way of handling your life savings.

> We leverage best-of-breed closed-source software

~~~
ryan-c
I suspect that is a parody and you have been trolled.

------
stvswn
Is the word "liberal" being used ironically?

~~~
belorn
Liberty is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that
are common to everyone in the society. Persons have a right to follow their
own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and not be subject to
the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others.

Is that a acceptable definition for you?

------
fiatjaf
This is a sheep that goes walking to the wolf and hopes to be devoured.

------
werber
This just seems like the Hurd of digital currencies.

------
dacox
So GNU just released FedCoin? Interesting...

------
sjudson
As I understand the scheme, I inform the mint I will have, say $200, wired to
it. It gives me a code which I give to my bank when they do the transfer, so
that the mint knows the money I told it would be arriving did actually arrive
from me. I then get a cryptographic assertion that I have $200 in my wallet.
Anonymous purchases work, as when I go to buy something all the information I
need to give the seller is the assertion I have the available amount of money,
and essentially the seller bills the mint for the cost of the game, which the
mint transfers to the seller's bank. The first question is how is bookkeeping
done so that money can't be spent twice? One option would be that when I go to
buy, say a $60 video game the system cryptographically bounds the purchase to
my wallet, so if I go to another retailer it says that I have spent $60 of the
original $200 in the wallet, and therefore have $140 left. The other option
would be that any transfer into my wallet can only be used once and in full.
The discussion does say the wallet holds a transaction history, but that
doesn't delinate which of the two previous modes of operation is the case.

There are a few issues with this if using the "wallet-bookeeping option" where
proofs-of-purchase are bound to the wallet. One, it doesn't protect against
dishonest sellers. Say a customer comes in with a wallet that originally held
$200 but they've spent $80. The seller can still bill the mint for $150, and
there is no way for the mint to confirm that the customer didn't have that
much still left over from their transfer to the mint. Secondly, presumably the
proof-of-purchase is cryptographically bound to the wallet, else the buyer
will simply discard it. With it bound, discarding the proof-of-purchase
discards the remaining money on it. However, for this to work, there must be
no recourse for the buyer to recoup the money in a lost wallet. But the user
can do this by backing up (which the discussion of Taler notes can be done),
which would allow the user to simply discard the version of the wallet with a
payment and simply return to the one without it.

Because of this, it seems likely that Taler would make any transfers one-use
only, to prevent against this issues. In such a case, the user would then
transfer the exact amount of funds needed (or something close, hoping to get
change in cash, which wouldn't be sustainable for the sellers if all their
buyers are using Taler) as needed right before making their purchase. In that
case, it is fully reasonable for the mint to be able to link purchases to bank
transfers, since there will only be so many $273.67 transfers (remember, the
mint knows who the transfers are from) followed within the next five minutes
by $273.67 purchases (and the mint will know the name of the seller).

Fundementally, the issue with all these schemes is that for the mint to not be
able to track the purchase, it needs to be able to decouple the processes of
taking deposits and paying out purchases among the folks who have money in the
mint. It can do this either by making the money holder responsible for the
bookkeeping, opening the door to fraud, or to make (as Chaum's Digicash did)
each certification a one-time use only, which incentivizes buyers to transfer
funds as needed, which allows for at least partial linkability, probably not
something which would standup in court in and of itself, but would probably be
sufficent circumstantial evidence in a number of cases.

I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding something, since these issues have all
been pointed out with previous anonymized e-cash attempts, and it seems
unlikely GNU would go to build a scheme that has these well-known weaknesses.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and there is some additional information here that I'm
misunderstanding or has yet to be presented. Also, for a useful read on this
type of thing see Brands' criticism of Chaum's pseudonym approach in "Building
in Privacy: Rethinking Public Key Infrastructrures and Digital Certificates"
(pgs. 25-32, although the whole intro is very useful).

EDIT: Making my points more clear, got pretty jumbled in my original post...

------
fleitz
Free software for an unfree currency.

~~~
Kenji
Very well said. As long as our monetary system is not freed from the grasp of
the government/central banks/banks in general, reasonable currencies will
never be widespread... Sane money is money that cannot be printed in arbitrary
amounts. The money monopoly is particularly harmful to economy & citizens.

~~~
Nursie
Thankfully there are not vast numbers of people that buy into that string of
assertions.

------
mnx
I don't mean to be a dick, but the default bootstrap look is not making it
easier to take this as a serious project.

But I like how this is not a giant project to waste electricity breaking
useless hashes.

