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by danShumway 1570 days ago
It's good to know that side of things hasn't been abandoned.

> I remain hopeful that we'll get through this mess "soon"

I know you can't give more definitive timetable or details about actual negotiations, but at a high level what does "get though this mess" here mean, what's the short-to-medium term goal that Taler is trying to achieve for how it initially enters the market? Is it possible I wake up one day X months/years from now and just see an announcement that a bank has now decided to use Taler and it'll go live next week, or is this something that's expected to be much more gradual in its rollout?

I don't feel like I have a great understanding of what the process for adoption for Taler looks like beyond the long-term goal that banks would start supporting it and then merchants would follow. I'm not sure if the plan is:

- a bunch of private negotiations happen, and then there's a breakthrough and suddenly within a year half of the banks are using it, or

- a bunch of smaller organizations take it up, and it starts out more niche and starts to grow, or

- somebody someday starts a Paypal equivalent that isn't even technically a bank, just a payment app.

I guess given that Taler is in talks with banks, the hope is that it gets adopted first with those banks; so is the goal that if talks are successful the rollout starts out at an almost national scale?

1 comments

At this point, different things look plausible in different countries. Consider the possibility of a major banking technology provider offering it as a feature, in which case basically on day 1 you have 1000 banks that can choose to offer it if they believe their customers want to use Taler. Or you may have a smaller bank offer Taler as a limited experiment just to see if there is a business case, with very limited publicity. Or you may have a big bank offer it as a strategic product. Or you may have even a central bank beat everyone else and launch it as the official central bank digital currency. Personally, I'll probably sleep better if it starts small.
Would you mind chatting about this? I'd like to help if possible - tech like this shows a beautiful version of 'the state' that I would happily support.
We have a mailinglist (taler@gnu.org), and my personal e-mail is also not difficult to find out. We can always use help. Still looking for an iOS developer, for example.
Makes sense. Thanks a ton for the info.