Cryptocurrency: Richard Stallman on Taler and Bitcoin

[grarpamp]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/richard-stallman-a-discussion-on-freedom-privacy-cryptocurrencies
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/10/0032203/richard-stallman-discusses-privacy-risks-of-bitcoin-suggests-something-much-better
https://stallman.org/glossary.html

Richard Stallman gave a new interview to the site Cointelegraph, which
asked him his feelings about cryptocurrencies. "I'm not against them,"
Stallman answers "I'm not campaigning to eliminate them, I just don't
particularly want to use them."

Cointelegraph then asks Stallman how he feels about tests underway for
the Chinese government's own central bank digital currency: Richard
Stallman: "Digital payment systems are fundamentally dangerous if they
are not engineered to ensure privacy. China is the enemy of privacy.
China shows what totalitarian surveillance is like. I consider that
hell on earth. That's part of why I haven't used cryptocurrencies that
are issued by the community. If the cryptocurrency is issued by a
government, it would surveille people just the way credit cards do and
PayPal does, and all those other systems meaning completely
unacceptable."
Stallman later says "I don't do any kind of digital payments, and the
reason is the systems that exist do not respect the user's privacy,
and that includes Bitcoin. Every Bitcoin transaction is published."
But when Cointelegraph asks about various Bitcoin modifications
designed for privacy, Stallman answers "I am not convinced about
them." Richard Stallman: In any case, the GNU project has developed
something much better, which is GNU Taler. GNU Taler is not a
cryptocurrency. It is not a currency at all. It is a payment system
designed to be used for anonymous payments to businesses to buy
something. It is anonymous through a blind signature for the payer.
However, the payee has to identify itself for every purchase in order
to get money out of the system. So the idea is you can use your bank
account to get Taler Tokens, and you can spend them and the payee
won't be able to tell who you are.

It won't be able to tell that you got the token from a particular bank
account at a particular time, even though you did so. To convert your
payment into money in its own bank, the store (the payee) will have to
identify itself. So this gives privacy in a much more reliable way
than cryptocurrencies do, and it blocks the idea of using this system
to enable tax evasion.

GNU Taler recently had an exciting milestone. A few months ago the
eurozone banking system became interested in supporting Taler
payments, and just recently they succeeded using a test setup in
obtaining Taler tokens with one bank account and paying them to
another bank account through the Taler system. Now, it's not something
that anybody can use but it will be, and that will be really exciting.
And in response to a question about Facebook's "Libra" digital
currency project, Stallman says he hasn't study the details "because
the most important thing about it I already know. It's connected with
Facebook, and Facebook means surveillance.

"I urge people to join me in absolutely refusing to use Facebook or
rather be used by Facebook. Because Facebook doesn't have users.
Facebook has used. So don't be a sucker, don't be used by Facebook."