I'd never heard of GNU Taler but the FAQ left me even more confused.

> Can I send money to my friends with Taler? Taler supports push and pull payments between wallets (also known as peer-to-peer payments). While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete.

Also the funds have an expiration date (forced spending). Who is this for? My naive read seems like it has all the downsides of bitcoin and more with none of its upsides