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EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

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Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#111

Post by SiempreViernes »

crotchfire wrote: post #89
t_mann wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing Taler with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs, the Eurozone incarnation of which would be the Digital Euro). I suppose the project being funded through an EU grant could mean that it's in consideration to be used for the Digital Euro, but your criticism would apply independently of whether Taler or another technology is used, and Taler could also be used in different contexts without those limita…

No, I'm not confusing anything. I think you're trying distract from the incredibly antisocial effects this project will have. Everything I wrote comes from the position paper published on the Taler project's website: https://taler.net/papers/cbdc2021en.pdf Page 16: These denomination keys, and thus the coins, would have an expiration date before which they must be spent or exchanged for new coins. Customers would be…

Paper and coin money also gets expired and you need to replace your mattress stuffing for the new versions every now and if you want to keep any value.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#112

Post by orwin »

TruthWillHurt wrote: post #53

"..funded as pilot under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative within the European Commission.." pilot + next gen + initiative + european commission . This combination of terms == no action.

The last time I participated in a project with all those terms (not 'next gen, it was' future', but the idea is the same), it gave birth to the legislation that forces manufacturers to keep providing spare parts 10 years after product EOL, and to provide plans for independants builders after that.

Long winded way of saying 'you're wrong'.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#113

Post by amadeuspagel »

pjc50 wrote: post #106
entropyie wrote: post #33

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 standard reply to this: https://github.com/pjc50/misc-personal.github.io/blob/master... > If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper article I read Define "read". And "article". Should you get charged for every link preview you scroll past on Twitter? (see lawsuits! the publishers think you should, or at least that this is copyright infringement) Can I build a page with one "article" plus one thou…

That link doesn't work.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#114

Post by [deleted] »

pndy wrote: post #65
some-username wrote: post #51

I find it kind of cute that they set up this mock-up currency 'kudos' to toy around with it. ( https://demo.taler.net/en/ ) 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 )

These examples under Essays feels obnoxiously dystopian; it's just a demo environment of course but I really hope that's not the feature where were heading into, in which every single link/piece of information on the Internet is locked behind payment. Doomsaying aside, here in Poland nearly everything can be paid with BLIK payments system - whether it's something you purchase on the Internet or small groceries at sho…

[deleted]

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#115

Post by pasc1878 »

eigenket wrote: post #93
pasc1878 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK I can use my bank's app/website to send money to another person's bank account. What do these 'sending money to people' systems do more than that?

To send a normal person money using blik you just need their phone number, this is usually more streamlined to obtain/deal with than the traditional identifying numbers for bank accounts. To buy something online using blik your bank's app generates a 6 digit one time code which is valid for something like 2 minutes. You enter that on the website of whoever you're trying to pay rather than give them your card number a…

So in this case the two parties both need to be registered with the app and then can exchange money that they easily know e.g. the phone number.

The phone number is an id into the bilk system.

With bank transfers both parties do not need to be register with an app they just use the id that they have already for other reasons the bank sort code and id. So needs less extra infrastructure but the user interface is more unfriendly (people don't remember their bank account number).

Now if banks linked your phone number to the account number and sort code.....

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#116

Post by littlestymaar »

pjc50 wrote: post #105
littlestymaar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4. the central bank gets to decide how much "cash" each individual deserves to have at any given point in time. Taler is a payment system, it has nothing to do with central banks at all. > 5. this "cash" has an expiration date, which is chosen at the whim of the central bank. If you stuff it in your mattress like paper cash, it becomes worthless. Therefore, this scheme is a massive step backwards in terms of centra…

Like a lot of conspiracy theory, there's a core of truth. All you have to do is ask the question "is this system going to be allowed to be used for crime on a huge scale", receive the obvious answer "no", and infer that there will be some control built into the system. Where it leaps into conspiracy is the question of when and whom this will be used against. But it's fairly obvious that measures will be taken against…

This has nothing to do with what GP invented (amount control and expiration date set by central banks).

> But it's fairly obvious that measures will be taken against drug sellers, sex workers, banned political parties and so on.

Yeah, of course like governments already do with cash!

There's a big difference between saying “governments are going to police things” (which is always true, that's their purpose in fact) and spreading made up claims involving a central bank's conspiracy (spoiler alert: policing isn't part of central banker's job, if somebody is going to do anything it will not be them but the plain and boring law enforcement agencies, but that sounds less bad as a conspiracy to say that police is going to police stuff, I guess).

If anything, a technology like Taler is a big improvement in terms of individual freedom compared to things like credit cards. If governments want to stop cash to combat crime (and save money, the logistics around cash is very expensive) having Taler instead of Visa is a massive benefit for privacy and freedom.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#117

Post by 0x64 »

null0pointer wrote: post #95
Animats wrote: post #35

Where is the balance in my wallet stored? Your wallet stores digital coins and thus ultimately your computer holds your balance. The exchange keeps funds matching all unspent coins in a settlement account. What if my wallet is lost? Since the digital coins of value in your wallet are anonymized, the exchange can not assist you in recovering a lost or stolen wallet. Just like with a physical wallet for cash, you are r…

Brilliant! The downsides of both crypto and centralized control! Just use Monero instead.

Exactly. Even the transaction costs aren't great:

"Actual transaction costs are estimated around 0.001 cent/tx (at high transaction rates, amortized over billions of transactions, excluding migration costs). Note that this is an early estimate -- and could thus easily be 10x higher." [1]

Transactions costing singular cents [2], and very soon fractions of a cent [3], are already doable on public rollups providing actual control of your own funds, with escape hatches in case the system sequencer falls over [4]. These are, of course, still under heavy development. If privacy is a requirement, there's a zk-rollup for that (or, just use Monero). Not to mention support for social recovery.

This is a very PoS-Ethereum-centric (and L2-scaling-centric) view. There are even cheaper chains that trade L1 decentralization for faster blocktimes, instant finality, and/or much cheaper fees.

[1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html

[2] https://l2fees.info/

[3] https://www.eip4844.com/

[4] https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#118

Post by eigenket »

pasc1878 wrote: post #115
eigenket wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To send a normal person money using blik you just need their phone number, this is usually more streamlined to obtain/deal with than the traditional identifying numbers for bank accounts. To buy something online using blik your bank's app generates a 6 digit one time code which is valid for something like 2 minutes. You enter that on the website of whoever you're trying to pay rather than give them your card number a…

So in this case the two parties both need to be registered with the app and then can exchange money that they easily know e.g. the phone number. The phone number is an id into the bilk system. With bank transfers both parties do not need to be register with an app they just use the id that they have already for other reasons the bank sort code and id. So needs less extra infrastructure but the user interface is more…

The way it works in Poland is that the banks which participate in the blik system (which I think is all or most of the banks with large usership) take care of the link between phone number and account for you. You don't need to register for anything special just provide your number when you open your bank account.

There is no separate app for blik (at least as far as I'm aware) the functionality is integrated into my bank's app.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#119

Post by littlestymaar »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #113
pjc50 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My standard reply to this: https://github.com/pjc50/misc-personal.github.io/blob/master... > If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper article I read Define "read". And "article". Should you get charged for every link preview you scroll past on Twitter? (see lawsuits! the publishers think you should, or at least that this is copyright infringement) Can I build a page with one "article" plus one thou…

That link doesn't work.

It's pretty apt since the argument doesn't either[1].

[1]Taler requires explicit user action for payment, it's not like publishers can charge you for scrolling.

Re: EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

#120

Post by eigenket »

summm wrote: post #104
postepowanieadm wrote: post #94

Another one? Europe already has multiple private and secure online payments: for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik

How is that one private? It is coupled to your bank account so your purchases can be nicely tracked, and to add insult, you also need to use your bank's crappy online banking app

Blik is explicitly not private in that sense, you have to trust your bank to use it. Not sure what they meant by that. However if your bank has a crappy online banking app and you live in Poland then you should probably change bank. The bank apps I've used as a foreigner living in Poland have all been essentially flawless (even using the English language versions).
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