Richard Stallman Criticizes Bitcoin, Touts a GNU Project Alternative (coindesk.com)

Richard Stallman doesn't like bitcoin, and has never used it, reports CoinDesk: To Stallman, bitcoin isn't suitable as a digital payment system. His biggest complaint: bitcoin's poor privacy protections. He told CoinDesk, "What I'd really like is a way to make purchases anonymously from various kinds of stores, and unfortunately it wouldn't be feasible for me with bitcoin." Using a crypto exchange would allow that company and ultimately the government to identify him, he said.... Asked what he thought about so-called privacy coins, Stallman said he'd gotten an expert to assess their potential, and "for each one he would point out some serious problems, perhaps in its security or its scalability." And speaking broadly, Stallman continued: "If bitcoin protected privacy, I'd probably have found a way to use it by now."
Fortunately, Stallman's GNU Project has a better answer: The GNU Project, which Stallman founded, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not -- forgive the hair-splitting -- a cryptocurrency. The Taler project's maintainer Christian Grothoff told CoinDesk that the system is, rather, designed for a "post-blockchain" world.... It's based on blind signatures, a cryptographic technique invented by David Chaum, whose DigiCash was among the first attempts at creating secure electronic money. Plus, Taler's attempt to create a digital money that resists surveillance by governments and payments companies aligns it with many cryptocurrency projects.

Yet, Taler does not attempt to bypass centralized authority. Payments are processed by openly centralized "exchanges" rather than peer-to-peer networks of miners because, Grothoff said, such a system "would again enable dangerous, money laundering kind of practice." Indeed, in a break with the anti-government ethos that has tended to characterize bitcoin and some of its peers, Taler's design explicitly tries to block opportunities for tax evasion.... Privacy in the Taler system, then, is limited to users spending their digital cash. They are shielded from surveillance because, Grothoff said, "the exchange, when coins are being redeemed, cannot tell if it was customer A or customer B or customer C who received the coin, because they all look identical from the exchange. Nobody," he added, "exactly knows who has how many tokens." Merchants (or anyone) receiving payments, on the other hand, do so visibly and in the open, making it possible for governments to assess taxes on their income -- not to mention harder for the recipients to participate in money laundering....

Currently, Taler is in talks with European banks to allow withdrawal into the Taler wallet and also re-deposit from the Taler system back into the traditional banking system.
"I wouldn't want perfect privacy," Stallman says in the interview, "because that would mean it would be impossible to investigate crimes at all. And that's one of the jobs we need the state to do."

Comments

It’s coming really, really soon

[93 Escort Wagon]

The GNU Foundation plans to release Taler alongside Hurd 1.0.

Why Use It?

[mentil]

Wait so Stallman wants privacy, but also wants the State to be able to investigate crimes? That sounds suspiciously like "privacy for my use case and noone else's". Furthermore, being able to send money anonymously STILL allows money laundering: "Yeah I sent that money to my restaurant chain, employees paid in cash. Why no I don't own any banks in the Caribbean, why do you ask?"

Re:Why Use It?

[mentil]

Windows license keys.

Re:Why Use It?

[AmiMoJo]

No, that sounds like cash. What Stallman objects to is people like Visa and Mastercard getting to monitor all your transactions. It's privacy from payment processors and from the kind of "automatic" surveillance that comes with it.

Cash is semi-anonymous. You don't have to reveal your ID for a lot of transactions with it, but sometimes do if you need stuff like delivery or are buying certain services. There are systems in place to make sure merchants don't cheat the system to avoid taxes or launder money too, although they might not be that effective. Bitcoin doesn't really improve on that, and neither does Taler.

What Taler does is scale and integrates with the law enough to be widely adopted by legitimate businesses, especially financial services like banks. It's also not tied to mining so doesn't waste vast amount of energy or act as a scam for early adopters.

Re:Why Use It?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not really. He wants the state to be able to see who receives money (so they can properly assess income tax and VAT), but not where that money is from. The state can see that I got 5 talers from you (and if I don't declare them they can ask questions about that). They can see that Pornhub received 5 talers for access to certain videos (and charge them the right VAT on that transaction). But they cannot see where I spent my 5 talers. Assessing taxes on monetary transactions is the state's business, but where I spend my money isn't. It also isn't anyone else's business. This coin supposedly is an answer to that problem.

As for it not being peer-to-peer: most people don't give a rat's arse about that: they want to be able to spend anonymously using a mechanism that allows for instant and cheap transactions. Likewise, banks like the idea of an easy, fast, cheap mechanism for settlement. The real question is: can it deliver on that score?

Re:So the problem with Bitcoin, according to RMS,

[gravewax]

ummm I think you somehow misread that. It is that bitcoin completely LACKS privacy.

Re:lol...Blind Signatures

[Anonymous Coward]

me thinks you are highly optimistic over quantum computers.

Re: Bitcoin is not a payment system.

[Vintermann]

I believe "buzzwords" are the answer. It doesn't really matter what the question is.

Stallman's currency won't be money either

[demon driver]

Seems nobody who's into alternative currencies, whether "blockchain" based or not, understands the principle by which money gets and retains its value, even though it's perfectly simple. No, it's neither by government decree nor by belief, that would be too simple, but then again it's only slightly more complex. It is by the objective trustworthiness of the promise that money invested in the currency area will come back as more money, meaning how reliably the promise is backed by the industry's profitability and growth within the currency area. Any alternative currency needs to be widely established and used in production, commerce and the payment of wages, before it gets such an ability, or the value needs to be fixed to an existing 'real' currency with an institution that can reliably guarantee the exchange into that currency.