[ForHackernews]

> When you pay with Taler, your identity does not have to be revealed to the merchant. The bank, government and mint will also never learn how you spent your electronic money. However, you can prove that you paid in court if necessary.

[choffman]

Again, existing technologies already provide this. And they further empower the user to expressly define how much anonymity they want...down to the transactional level.

Empowering governments with additional taxation tools is about the only thing this brings to the table over existing technologies.