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  {\large GNU Taler: A Digital Cash Commons}
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Economic activity is central to modern life, but with the disappearance of
physical cash the monetary foundation for our economy is privatized.
Contemporary trends are frightening: mass-surveillance is enabled by tracking
consumers though payments, payment processors can and do impose economic death
sentences on NGOs, business or individuals they disagree with, and oligopolies
established by Big Tech charge excessive rent on their platforms in the form
of high transaction fees. Alternative currencies using blockchains are mostly
renowned for impractically low transaction rates, excessive energy consumption
and virtually exclusive use for speculation and criminal transactions.

With GNU Taler, we are creating an electronic payment system that is Free
Software and (according to experts) compatible with existing regulations,
including KYC, AML and GDPR.  Payments are processed in existing currencies
like Euros.  Taler offers customers privacy when they spend their
electronic cash, but at the same time ensures that income is transparent to
the state (facilitating anti-corruption and tax-collection efforts).  Taler
scales to millions of transactions per second, and is also environmentally
responsible due to transaction costs substantially below those of cash or
credit cards.  As a result, consumers will finally be able to make
micropayments. This will provide an alternative for funding of online
journalists, bloggers and content creators, relieving their current dependence
on advertisement revenue for their income.  As a reserve-based system, Taler
also has advantages for economically disadvantaged populations, as consumers
need neither a bank account nor credit-worthiness. Our Free Software
implementation can be modified to accomodate disabled people and to include
educational features to teach users financial responsibility. Parents will be
able to set budgets and restrict purchases of their children to
age-appropriate goods and services.

Taler's core technology is implemented and documented
(https://docs.taler.net/) by the GNUnet (e.V.) community and Taler Systems SA
(a business we founded to provide commercial support).  We integrated the
payment system with various demonstrator applications, from Web shops (such as
WooCommerce) to in-person payments via QR code or NFC.  The Taler wallet is
available as a WebExtension for Chrome, Firefox and Brave, and also as an App
for Android.  There are ongoing discussions with several central banks (ECB,
SNB) about the use of Taler as a CBDC. We also have a German community bank
partnering with us to bring the system into commercial operation.  Several
organizations (like the Tor Project and various publishers) have signed
letters of intent to deploy Taler as soon as we have regulatory approval and
are in operation.  A demo of online services that use GNU Taler for payments
is available at https://demo.taler.net/.

For regulatory approval, we need to still enhance the wallet with backup
functionality, improve the documentation, and find a way to fund independent
security audits.  Additional funding is sought to port the Taler wallet to
further platforms, add financial education features that analyze a user's
spending on their own device, improve the documentation, and to translate our
user interfaces into more languages.

We will deploy the Taler system inside the University of Applied Sciences in
Bern for internal payments in Q1 2020.  After this small-scale operation that
requires no regulatory approval, we will complete the integration with the
German bank and proceed to document the system for regulatory approval.  Once
approved, we will launch the system with our media partners.  Various
non-profits have already signalled their support (Wau Holland Foundation,
Renewable Freedom Foundation, DigitalCourage, as well as many individual
Ashoka fellows, including people involved with Wikipedia and Change.org).
After the launch, we will work in parallel on the integration with more and
more platforms and also continue to push the development of the consumer's
wallet (financial education, accessibility, translation).  If we can show
significant up-take, we envision to eventually transition the system to become
a centrally banked digital currency operated by the respective central bank
as legal tender.
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