this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024

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Privacy

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-12

GNU Taler is not your friend (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

108 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Recently read an ELI5 of the digital euro and was pleasantly surprised. If it works as designed, you can perform offline payments from one device to another, which sounds like your use case. No central servers, no blockchain.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (12 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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I personally could never use crypto as it empowers criminals and is very unpredictable.

Do you also avoid cash?

Linux is used by criminals and fascists as well, outlaw Linux?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do you also avoid cash?

Yes, they're a nuisance to carry around anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Criminality is unfortunately a very subjective term. Data brokers are not criminals, neither corrupt politicians, but you can easily become one by not doing any harm, but going on a protest, or standing up to bad things imposed on you or other people.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

When crypto bros stop shilling anti-libre software, maybe i'll start to care.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Funny how we're big into privacy here, and then money comes up and lots of people are "wait no, not that kind of privacy."

[+] [email protected] -14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I do not like drugs and human trafficking.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Ah yes, must keep that war on drugs going, it's totally worth sacrificing everyones' privacy to make sure the Devil's Cabbage is kept off the streets. Reefer Madness is epidemic.

And human trafficking, yes, we can't have people sending remittances to their families in destitute foreign countries so that they might be able to afford to immigrate too. So many poor foreigners trying to get in!

Or maybe this is actually too complicated an issue to dismiss with a simple "if people have done nothing wrong they have nothing to hide?"

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Also ... That implies you don't like freedom, democracy, feeding refugees, medical care for the exploited, and over throwing dictatorships.

Everything has a trade-off, to only enable systems that have absolute central control, you invite central control of everything

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

You people realize that most crypto is even less private? Every transaction ever can be viewed by everyone, forever, by design.

Sure, a crypto wallet might not have your name on it when created, but good luck buying or selling any without giving away your identity.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You people realize that most crypto is even less private? Every transaction ever can be viewed by everyone, forever, by design.

There's some truth to this but it's also not really the case.

Each address is pseudononymous even in original Bitcoin.
Bitcoin lightning transactions are completely opaque to the network, they are never on-chain. At this point, there are vastly more transactions on lightning than on-chain. They confirm instantly and are known only to your node, the receiver's wallet, and intermediary nodes (if any). Lightning inherits security from the main chain while giving you sub-second transaction confirmation times.
Monero exists, coinjoin (Bitcoin) exist, changing addresses and having multiple wallets exists, liquidity swaps exist. The chain analysis game is getting harder and more complex every year.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, most crypto are totally useless, for privacy or anything else other than lottery and heating the home. But why are those discussed any further than just telling not to use them?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cryptocurrency/

Because everything in life has a trade-off, and talking about the utility, and the costs, is a reasonable thing to do. And yes there are ways to enable greater levels of privacy online using cryptocurrency then any other method available to us. So it is worth a discussion sometimes

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

good luck

except there are many sites dedicated to doing exactly that. you can send cash in the mail, giftcards, exchange via other cryptocurrencies, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

False. Use Monero.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Monero fixes this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Lemmy is ease for glowies to astroturf.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

GNU Taler is inferior anyway, and it has been existing for many years with exact zero of usage.

Imagine reinventing Chaumian e-cash 40 year later and promoting it as a innovative approach in digital payments.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

It takes time to do it right. I have no idea if it will be usable with real currencies at some point but for now you can use it with your own made up currency.

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