Mastodawn

This is quite interesting: The German government is asked to provide a statement about #Taler, its potential to become a digital payment system for the digital Euro!

The left opposition in the German parliament ("Die Linke") has made a minor interpellation (Kleine Anfrage) in the aftermath of the de-banking of mostly left-leaning NGO's, asking the German government if and how it will help end over-compliance of banks and, this is interesting, the future of a digital Euro.
(https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/21/041/2104184.pdf)

See question 22, which is about #GNUTaler (translated by GT, slightly edited):

Has the Federal Government evaluated the possibility of proposing the GNU Taler as a technical basis for central bank money, or does it plan to do so? If not, why not?

a) What significance does the Federal Government generally attribute to open-source software with regard to digital payment systems, particularly with regard to the greatest possible digital independence?

b) Which payment systems are known to the Federal Government that, on the one hand, ensure anonymity for buyers comparable to cash, while simultaneously disincentivise money laundering and tax evasion by identifying the payment recipients, and would the GNU Taler, in the Federal Government's opinion, be a suitable payment system according to this criterion?

I'm very happy about #Taler being brought up at the governmental level. Let' see what their answer will be.

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WuMing2 Mar 12

@oec I gave a look at the research paper with a critical analysis of the proposed digital euro. But goes beyond my expertise. It does mention Taler and #ECB TIPS though.

With instant payments already available, with growing adoption, directly between bank accounts in the #Eurosystem what is Taler providing which is missing in the ECB solution?

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Özgür Kesim Mar 12

@WuMing2

In short: #Taler provides full payer anonymity, while maintaining taxability of the payee.

You are combining instant payment solutions with the ECB's digital euro in the question; I will compare #Taler to both of them individually.

#Taler is different to existing digital payment systems (for fiat currencies), in that it provides full anonymity for the payer. No existing card payment or instant payment solution, like Wero, offer anonymity - who buys is known to the payment service provider. This is by design not possible in Taler - the buyer remains anonymous in the system.

The ECB's online solution for a digital Euro also doesn't offer full anonymity for payer, only pseudonymity (i.e. users are assigned an unique ID in the ECB system), alongside with the risk and easy ability to de-anonymize buyers. (In the separately defined and proposed offline solution for the digital euro, anonymity is part of the design, but the solution itself is not technically sound¹).

¹) More detailed (but accessible) critique of the digital euro design you can find in our talk "What the FAQ, ECB?" with Mikolai Gütschow at Datenspuren 2025: https://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/datenspuren/2025/h264-hd/ds25-542-eng-Digital_Euro_-_What_the_FAQ_ECB_hd.mp4

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WuMing2

@oec Excluding the privacy angle, what Taler offers that ECB TIPS doesn’t provide? TIPS is very cheap already.

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Özgür Kesim 4d ago

@WuMing2

On top of better privacy, #Taler is not account based, and therefore the threat model is very different. All account based systems, including TIPS, suffer from identity theft, loss of credentials, unauthorized access to accounts etc.

This is not possible in Taler: You withdraw coins directly onto your wallet. They are then in your custody. No account, no login, no danger of credentials getting stolen.

Even if you have not made a backup of your wallet and - say - you loose your mobile phone, then only the amount left in the wallet is lost. No need to "lock an account" or "credit card".