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Yep. GNU Taler should be enough for all needs of a decentralized payment system. The whole need for cryptocurrencies is a dark area of tax evasion and illegali

Yep. GNU Taler should be enough for all needs of a decentralized payment system. The whole need for cryptocurrencies is a dark area of tax evasion and illegality hiding (which it isn't even good at). Oh, something it does very well is to waste energy [edit: actually it seems like MobileCoin is not that hungry, see children comments].

hiq 6y ago
> Oh, something it does very well is to waste energy. That's not the case for MobileCoin though. Energy waste does not seem to be direct a requirement by Signal to integrate a cryptocurrency, but the user friendliness and the fast transaction validation make it hard for a good candidate to be wasteful (there's only so much energy you can waste if your transaction is validated within 5s).
- henearkr 6y ago
  That's a positive point for MobileCoin. This way it seems like they can follow a better path (regarding energy) than the mainline coins like btc, that's a very good thing.
monkeydust 6y ago
Thanks. Never heard of GNU Taler,nice concept but is it being applied anywhere in the world today?
- bertman 6y ago
  Yes, you can pay with it at a cafeteria snack machine in a Swiss university. https://taler.net/de/news/2020-09.html https://taler.net/de/news/2020-09.html
  - monkeydust 6y ago
    Thanks. More details on that implementation here: https://www.bfh.ch/de/aktuell/news/2020/gnu-taler-bfh/ https://www.bfh.ch/de/aktuell/news/2020/gnu-taler-bfh/ https://archive.ph/3YxkK https://archive.ph/3YxkK
zajio1am 6y ago
> Yep. GNU Taler should be enough for all needs of a decentralized payment system. Not really. Unfortunately GNU Taler has distinct customer/merchant accounts so it is more alternative to specialized service-payment systems like visa/mastercard, than to general peer-to-peer payment systems like bank accounts.
- henearkr 6y ago
  Then everybody can have two accounts, Rx and Tx, right? What is the problem then? It would all be nicely wrapped in a fun and convenient app. Having separate accounts allows you to immediately know how much tax you need to pay, it'll be just a fraction of your Rx account.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
    Because the exchanges can go down and take your funds with them. A large part of the reason why Bitcoin was created was to ensure that there was a digital solution for avoiding trusting the banking system
    - henearkr 6y ago
      Exchanges go down for a reason. If you don't want to be in it, you put yourself outside of the national economic scheme. I can see the reason why, but if everybody does the same then the whole economy goes "informal" and you deprive the state from any income. That what is happening in most West African countries (95% of the economy is in the "informal") and for exactly the same reasons (No trust in the state and want to avoid taxes. And note that money devaluation because of money printing is another form of taxation, with delaying time effects.) And the net effect in those African countries is that you cannot even enforce the law, there isn't at all any budget for anything. If you're robbed then you will have to pay the police yourself in order to have them do the work to catch the culprit and find your stolen goods.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
CryptoPunk 6y ago
>>tax evasion and illegality hiding (which it isn't even good at). This is just a Big Brother smear against privacy, with a socialist twist emanating from those with a financial stake in empowering the state and its dependent industries over the private citizen. Exactly your arguments are made in the campaign to criminalize the use of cash: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is-good-will-be-lost https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is... Credit card company representative's statement on it in 2014: >There's huge interest in cryptocurrencies and what perhaps they can create in the market place. Now we at MasterCard are not completely comfortable with the idea of cryptocurrencies largely because they go against the whole principle that we've established our business on which is really moving to a world beyond cash and ensuring greater transparency.. If you think about it, cash is a problem for a number of countries. Cash really facilitates anonymity, it facilitates illegal activity, it facilitates tax avoidance and a range of other things that aren't going to drive efficiency in an economy -https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8?t=2m57s https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8?t=2m57s >If it's an anonymous transaction, that sounds like a suspicious transaction. Why does somebody need to be anonymous? - https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8#t=4m12s https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8#t=4m12s

hiq 6y ago

> Oh, something it does very well is to waste energy. That's not the case for MobileCoin though. Energy waste does not seem to be direct a requirement by Signal to integrate a cryptocurrency, but the user friendliness and the fast transaction validation make it hard for a good candidate to be wasteful (there's only so much energy you can waste if your transaction is validated within 5s).

henearkr 6y ago
That's a positive point for MobileCoin. This way it seems like they can follow a better path (regarding energy) than the mainline coins like btc, that's a very good thing.

monkeydust 6y ago

Thanks. Never heard of GNU Taler,nice concept but is it being applied anywhere in the world today?

bertman 6y ago
Yes, you can pay with it at a cafeteria snack machine in a Swiss university. https://taler.net/de/news/2020-09.html https://taler.net/de/news/2020-09.html
- monkeydust 6y ago
  Thanks. More details on that implementation here: https://www.bfh.ch/de/aktuell/news/2020/gnu-taler-bfh/ https://www.bfh.ch/de/aktuell/news/2020/gnu-taler-bfh/ https://archive.ph/3YxkK https://archive.ph/3YxkK

zajio1am 6y ago

> Yep. GNU Taler should be enough for all needs of a decentralized payment system. Not really. Unfortunately GNU Taler has distinct customer/merchant accounts so it is more alternative to specialized service-payment systems like visa/mastercard, than to general peer-to-peer payment systems like bank accounts.

henearkr 6y ago
Then everybody can have two accounts, Rx and Tx, right? What is the problem then? It would all be nicely wrapped in a fun and convenient app. Having separate accounts allows you to immediately know how much tax you need to pay, it'll be just a fraction of your Rx account.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  Because the exchanges can go down and take your funds with them. A large part of the reason why Bitcoin was created was to ensure that there was a digital solution for avoiding trusting the banking system
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Exchanges go down for a reason. If you don't want to be in it, you put yourself outside of the national economic scheme. I can see the reason why, but if everybody does the same then the whole economy goes "informal" and you deprive the state from any income. That what is happening in most West African countries (95% of the economy is in the "informal") and for exactly the same reasons (No trust in the state and want to avoid taxes. And note that money devaluation because of money printing is another form of taxation, with delaying time effects.) And the net effect in those African countries is that you cannot even enforce the law, there isn't at all any budget for anything. If you're robbed then you will have to pay the police yourself in order to have them do the work to catch the culprit and find your stolen goods.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

CryptoPunk 6y ago

>>tax evasion and illegality hiding (which it isn't even good at). This is just a Big Brother smear against privacy, with a socialist twist emanating from those with a financial stake in empowering the state and its dependent industries over the private citizen. Exactly your arguments are made in the campaign to criminalize the use of cash: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is-good-will-be-lost https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is... Credit card company representative's statement on it in 2014: >There's huge interest in cryptocurrencies and what perhaps they can create in the market place. Now we at MasterCard are not completely comfortable with the idea of cryptocurrencies largely because they go against the whole principle that we've established our business on which is really moving to a world beyond cash and ensuring greater transparency.. If you think about it, cash is a problem for a number of countries. Cash really facilitates anonymity, it facilitates illegal activity, it facilitates tax avoidance and a range of other things that aren't going to drive efficiency in an economy -https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8?t=2m57s https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8?t=2m57s >If it's an anonymous transaction, that sounds like a suspicious transaction. Why does somebody need to be anonymous? - https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8#t=4m12s https://youtu.be/bO4jHXjCXw8#t=4m12s