[Cryptography] GNU's "anonymous-but-taxable electronic payments system" Heh.

[Jeff Burdges]

Taler is basically a modernization of Chaum's original blind signature
scheme from like 30 years ago.  

Taler drops Chaum's trick by which double spending results in
deanonymization.  Instead, Taler does online detenction of double
spending, and so does not support offline merchants like Chaum did.  It
follows that a Taler exchange (mint) and merchant cannot be defrauded by
customers in the way Chaum allowed, so a Taler exchange does not need a
collections department the way Chaum and did, and Credit Cards do.
This, along with not using wasteful proof-of-work, makes Taler suitable
for "micro-transactions."  Of course, this also removed the most natural
category of deanonymization attacks on customers in Chaum's scheme.

Taler uses a RESTful API and runs in the browser : 
 http://demo.taler.net/
 http://api.taler.net/
You'll find the git repositories here :
 http://www.git.taler.net/

Chaum's blind signature scheme was arguably already taxable in the sense
that merchants not wishing their bank to see their income needed to take
risks to avoid it.  Taler's refresh protocol extends the risks to tax
evading merchants from merely legal to actually opening the merchant up
for fraud. 

As for Bitcoin, I suspect existing BitCoin exchange might simply deploy
their own Taler exchange as an off blockchain transaction system that
deals in BitCoins.  Taler would provide their customers with convenient
web based purchases with true anonymity.  I'd expect folks involved in
side chains will find Taler interesting too. 

Best,
Jeff

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