51–60 of 146 posts
What makes it (more) cute is that you can use it to reserve entries in their GNS first-come-first-served service. (https://fcfs.gnunet.org/)
GNS being the GNU Name System which is a decentralized/p2p equivalent to DNS. (https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html)
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)
Indeed, GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot actually implement digital cash. In a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger maintained using a peer-to-peer protocol, but the transactions themselves are still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfers, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties…
pilot + next gen + initiative + european commission .
This combination of terms == no action.
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?
Debit and credit cards are not popular everywhere. In Germany, their market share is below 50% in e-commerce transactions. In retail it's just above 50%. If you look at the overall volume, 82% of their transactions are made in cash. Now, would they swap cash this solution? I doubt it... Privacy is a reason but not the only one.
I have a strong memory of going to a cafe next to my hotel in Berlin and ordering a coffee and being completely shocked I couldn't pay for it by card. I hadn't even considered that I might need cash. After some conversation the nice lady in the cafe told me keep the coffee and to come back the next day with the cash. They really hate card payments for some reason.
On the other hand in Poland I've been unable to use my card in a couple of places because they only take mobile payments/Blik. The contrast is wild.
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.
Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think it was tried?
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?
If it’s equally convenient and cheaper, people could easily use this. It may even be their bank who sets it up for them when they pay for something. I know at least one person employed in banking who thinks it’s insane that Visa and Mastercard get a 2% cut of any transaction.
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.
Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think it was tried?
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?
Credit cards are terrible. One has to share a few secret numbers with the merchant and the merchant then takes money out of the cards account. It relies on fully trusting every single merchant to have perfect honestly and security.
Plus credit cards have a transaction cost that is paid to foreign companies. It’s quite ridiculous that a Dutch person buying online in Germany ends up paying a tiny transaction cost to a third country.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think it was tried?
Flattr was a kind of a version of that (although billed as "donations"), and it recently shut down. https://flattr.com/
My impression (which might be unfair since I haven't used the Taler system) is that this looks like a technically better but practically worse version of payment systems which already exist in parts of Europe like the Polish Blik, Swedish Swish, Norwegian Vipps and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name of that one). In "the real world" I really don't want to be dealing with a wallet of electronic ca…
iDeal you mean?