>>As far as I understand it, Taler is not made for person-to-person payments, but for person-to-service-provider payments. As far as I'm concerned, this is an

>>As far as I understand it, Taler is not made for person-to-person payments, but for person-to-service-provider payments. As far as I'm concerned, this is an arbitrary distinction to rationalize depriving some class of interactions between individuals of the right to privacy. >>At the same time, it is controllable enough for governments and banks that they could consider introducing such a system. I find this very defeatist, and this attitude becoming pervasive would guarantee that the trend toward mass-surveillance of all private interactions would continue unabated. Perhaps it's true that this is the type of system that governments and banks might be willing to introduce today. Afterall, privacy in financial interaction is not acceptable to the mainstream institutions. Over the last century, and especially since the early 1990s, the Overton window has shifted toward greater state control and less privacy. The proof of this is in the fact if cash were introduced today, it would be made illegal. And instead of pushing back against this trend toward mass-surveillance, Taler cows to it, with ideological rationalizations to boot. Cryptocurrency has a real potential to reverse the trend towards a dystopian surveillance state controlled by a handful of governments and payment processors, and the people behind Taler are too enamoured with their left-wing political ideology, and visions of taxing every one, to support it.