GNU taler is based on Chaum's e-cash. There are certain issues with chaumian mints. Obvious one is that the mint owner can run with the money, and thus the syst

GNU taler is based on Chaum's e-cash. There are certain issues with chaumian mints. Obvious one is that the mint owner can run with the money, and thus the system requires trust. Compared to a centralized payment system such as Paypal, the only benefit is anonymity of transactions. There has been some development of federated chaumian mints, such that the required trust is split over multiple parties. This is possible with Bitcoin, and it would make sense as a scalability and privacy solution. See: https://fedimint.org https://fedimint.org