41–50 of 146 posts
If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper article I read, I would happily do so. The biggest issue with paying for news is that you are reduced to a small handful of sources. I would like to read a couple of articles from a hundred sources, not a hundred articles from one source. Not sure this platform solves the problem, but it would be a game changer if it did.
My question is: How does the average Jane and Joe benefits compared to Debit and Credit Cards? Privacy, they do not care. Being anonymous, they do not care. So a dead initiative?
Young people in particular care way more about privacy that us older people. In fact, young people feel way more anxiety around things that are tied to your identity.
But even despite them, I feel like even in my extended family privacy issues are increasingly very important to people. Everybody knows somebody who has been scammed.. even lost a great amount of money.
Your average user is caring more and more about security and privacy.
Re: being anonymous, I don't know. I suspect the anonymity part is more related to privacy for most people.
The other benefits of this of course is that you can make your own payment system and integration, and you won't need to be dependent upon VISA/Mastercard for your payments. Cheaper transaction fees ultimately helps lower product prices, enables microtransactions and more - I wouldn't discount how much of a big deal this would be.
I'm sure once they've finalized the whole thing, Misa/Vastercard will have employed their lobbying powers to the fullest to inject themselves into the final spec, but here's hoping.
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No it's not. GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot implement digital cash: in a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger, but still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfer, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-based digital "money" (quo…
> quotes because there is no such thing, "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities
Fellow gold money user in the thread?
As an aside, the taler (or thaler) is an old German-and-surrounding-regions coin that’s the root etymology for the word “dollar”.
GNU Taler has been in development since 2014 (10 years now!). I'm very happy to see European Commision's interest in this privacy-protecting technology. Along with GNU Net and GNU Social (amongst others), it seems like one of those technologies that have a huge potential to make internet a better place for everyone.
While many consider GNU projects to be vaporware with development pace of a turtle, it seems that the turtle is slowly starting to lead the race. GNU Hurd has also had significant news lately [0]. I'm feeling really hopeful about this, especially after the somewhat recent RMS lynching campaign that was lead by major corporations.
In "the real world" I really don't want to be dealing with a wallet of electronic cash stored on my computer. What I want to be able to do is relatively seamlessly pay for a curry or send my friend some money I owe them or something.
People should know that 1. it's not based on any kind of blockchain, 2. it's not a currency, it's a payment system which you could use to transfer other currencies (euro, dollar, ...) and 3. unlike most blockchain-based currencies it offers anonymity (only for buyers, not for sellers, though)
On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system as you said, and uses advanced cryptography (double blind signatures) and infrastructure that allow it to be bearer-based, i.e., actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties can take place. Taler can actually do digital cash, with buyers privacy, and auditability and taxability of sellers.
Ok. So, privacy?
Given that the system ultimately relies on centralized actors, it can only be private for payment amounts below any applicable travel rule amount in the given jurisdiction.
My question is: How does the average Jane and Joe benefits compared to Debit and Credit Cards? Privacy, they do not care. Being anonymous, they do not care. So a dead initiative?
I absolutely care about privacy. Also, if I can pay the kebab shop with less fee with my phone(hopefully) rather than them putting up a note that “only cash”(because CC charges large fees), it’ll be an immediate win for me to avoid carrying wallet full of heavy coins and cash everywhere like medieval times.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and, as quoted by sunshine_reggae, lower transaction costs.
as an average joe on the consumer end I don't care about transaction costs. at least here in germany that's the vendor's problem.