Re: [Taler] How does the "Withdraw Loophole" enable untaxed payments?

[Christian Grothoff]

On 3/12/21 8:15 AM, Rune K. Svendsen wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> I was reading Florian Dold's thesis on GNU Taler, and I had trouble
> understanding the allegedly problematic aspect of the "Withdraw
> Loophole". My reasoning about this being unproblematic is as follows:
> since the merchant, who receives payment via the Withdraw Loophole,
> will eventually need to deposit the funds with an exchange (in order
> to be paid by the exchange), and thus reveal the amount it has
> received, it does not enable untaxed payments. The exchange will
> always know exactly the amount received by a merchant, regardless of
> whether it was received via the Withdraw Loophole or not.
> 
> Can someone elaborate on why the above reasoning doesn't hold?

The merchant receiving coins via the withdraw loophole can spend them at
another merchant.

Anyway, Dold's thesis contains a rather concise explanation on how to
*fix* the withdraw loophole, I've attached an unpublished draft that
elaborates a bit more on the fix and the drawbacks it entails, in case
you are curious.

-Christian

withdraw.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

signature.asc
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