this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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GNU Taler is not your friend (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by makeasnek@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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On P2P payments from their FAQ: "While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete."

How about, no? How about me paying €50 to my friend for fixing my bike doesn’t need to be intermediated, KYCed, and blocked if they don't approve of it or know who the recipient is? How about it’s none of the government’s business how I split the bill at dinner with friends? This level of surveillance is madness, especially coming from an app that touts "privacy" as a feature.

GNU Taler is a trojan horse to enable CBDC adoption. They are the friendly face to an absolutely terrifying level of government control in our lives funded by the same government that tries every year to implement chat control. Imagine your least favourite political party gaining power. Now imagine they can see and control every transaction you make. No thanks.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GNU Taler is not your enemy. It may not solve every problem you'd like it to, but its adoption by the masses would be a vast improvement in privacy compared to the current state of commerce in every country where it has the slightest chance of happening any time soon.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have a feeling its adoption would bring the end of cash a big step closer.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The suggestions like this also scare me in that it might require you to carry a smartphone all the time for things as basic as payment.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

This is totally unrelated to GNU Taler though, and if it comes to that you will be happy to have GNU Taler as an privacy preserving option.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

CBDCs are coming whether you like it or not and a GNU Taler based payment system is currently our best mitigation strategy against them.

It's pointless to compare GNU Taler to crypto-currencies as it is a payment system and not a pseudo-currency.

[–] sntx@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, Taler by design allows identifiction of the receiver.

It does not reveal the sender.

It allows you to create and arbitrate your own tokens and to create your own "bank".

Here's a Video doing a good job at explaining it jn detail.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I disagree. Taler also individuals to stay private while preventing crime. I personally could never use crypto as it empowers criminals and is very unpredictable. Taler uses flat currency so you don't need to worry about it losing value overnight.

It isn't done yet and it may get abandoned but it is a start. For now it is a interesting project to watch. Also cash is king

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Taler uses flat currency so you don't need to worry about it losing value overnight.

There are a number of stabletokens that you also wouldn't need to worry about losing value overnight.

[–] makeasnek@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Stablecoins are the worst of crypto and central banking combined.

  • They are centralized, even more centralized than central banks since they are run by a single company not an board appointed by an elected government
  • They can rug you at any time
  • They only have value because they are "pegged" to a certain currency and the "backing" must exist to maintain that peg.
  • Their source of the backing is often "trust me bro"
  • Even if the backing was solid, market shocks and other problems can reduce the value of that backing, leading to them being insolvent and the stablecoin losing its value. And guess what, it wasn't insured!
  • They are often poorly regulated or unregulated entirely, so you have no reason to trust their claims and probably can't seek any real remedy if they are lies
  • They are, at best, pegging their value to a currency which is designed to lose 2-3% of its value per year due to inflation

Several of them have already collapsed spectacularly. More will in time. Avoid stablecoins.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some stablecoins are centralized, but it's not a fundamental requirement of how they operate. Stabletokens such as DAI or Liquity are run without a central company. They cannot "rug" you because they're based on smart contracts.

They are often poorly regulated or unregulated entirely

Isn't that kind of the point?

so you have no reason to trust their claims

Smart contract code can be audited by anyone and trusted to run exactly as it's written.

They are, at best, pegging their value to a currency which is designed to lose 2-3% of its value per year due to inflation

Stablecoins aren't required to peg to any specific measure of value (I assume you're referring to US dollars?). There are stabletokens pegged to gold, for example, if you really want something like that.

Since US dollars work just fine for commerce, though, using a stabletoken that's pegged to US dollars works fine for commerce too.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's just smoke and mirrors. If there was a "bank run" on a stable coin all of them would immediately collapse as there is nothing of real value backing them.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anything of value is capable of losing its value under some circumstances, since value is assigned by humans. Obviously you pick and choose based on your use cases.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a cop-out to avoid discussing that none of the stable coins have anywhere close to the assets they claim to have and which would be necessary to peg the value.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can examine the MakerDAO contract, for example, and see all of the assets they claim to have sitting right there under its control on the blockchain. You can see the contract logic behind how those assets enter and exit its control.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you can't see how the snake bites its own tail here I can't really help you, but on-chain "assets" do nothing for a stable coin that needs to be secured by off-chain assets.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So basically you only "believe in" off-chain assets? That's fine, but it kind of removes you from any discussion of the details of blockchains. You've rejected their entire premise so why bother?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, I am rejecting the notion of stable coins, which are by their own definition literal scams. But I am strongly suspecting that you are directly involved in such scams as you continue to muddle it with entirely unrelated issues just so to make it sound like this is a general problem and not a stable coin specific one.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, I am rejecting the notion of stable coins, which are by their own definition literal scams.

By what definition is that?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That they can peg them to a currency like the USD. Unless you are the United States of America, that is literally impossible. But even if you discard that technical impossibility, none have even close to the assets required to even approximate a peg, so it is a scam both theoretically and practically.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's DAI's peg over time. Over the past year it's had a high point of $1.0012 and a low of $0.9979, neither extreme lasting more than a brief spike. Seems like a pretty good peg to me. The mechanism by which it maintains its peg is complex, but fully transparent since it happens entirely on-chain.

Here's LUSD, another similarly algorithmically-pegged stabletoken. It's smaller than DAI so it's a bit less stable, it had one spike this year where it went all the way up to $1.029. But the mechanism is much simpler so if you're having trouble understanding DAI it might be an easier place to start.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

I have no problem understanding that scams need to look good for a while to attract victims...

[–] GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Your first example is tax fraud if you hide it

Edit: it looks like you edited your post to state the guy repairing your bike is "your friend".

Noone is going to go after him if he just fixes your bike. But if he fixes the bike of his 1000 friends each month, they will go after him if he didn't declare it.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That may technically be true, but it's currently very normalized. Do we actually want to denormalize it? Should the government know about every trivial transaction?

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 1 year ago

Which jurisdiction are you referring to? GNU Taler isn't specific to any particular country or currency.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

/c/Libertarian is that way:

Iconic old meme image of a guy with his head up his own ass.

/c/Cryptocurrency is over there:

Image of the /r/Buttcoin community's logo