If Bitcoin ever gets the privacy innovations that Monero has, it will become illegal. So you might as well switch to monero now and stop waiting. Bitcoin is only NOT illegal because it is super easy for govnts to control, trace transactions and taxes and (most importantly) takes the focus away from actual private permissionless cryptocurrency like monero.
Discussion
Appreciate the thoughts, but if Bitcoin is so easy to control why haven’t they enforced their sanctions on BTC transactions and inflated the money supply? 🤔
Can you give a concrete example in which Bitcoin cannot do what it has been doing because the govt has stopped it? Careful to ensure you don’t reference a centralized service provider rather than bitcoin itself 👍🏻
The govnt can and does monitor all transactions via KYC and capital gains tax laws. Of course you can break the law, but Bitcoin isn't goign to help you do that easier than fiat cash does. The govnt has made laws that require Bitcoin transactions to be transparent, and its very very difficult (and also illegal) to prevent that transparency without risk of jail (at least in UK) or doing something radical like move to El Salvador. Max Keiser moved to El Salvador because he knows Bitcoin is not lawfully private in UK and US (he lived in both). He knew the writing was on the wall and got out with his fortune before the govnt comes for it. And it will.
None of what you explain here is about controlling Bitcoin, it's about controlling *people.* This is very well understood, but the point in the current system is that they can control people BY controlling the system (ie. censorship transactions, freezing bank accounts, confiscating unlimited resources through counterfeiting, unilaterally exerting control over anything and anyone's entire economic foundation).
In each of the scenarios you gave, you are indicating that they have to attack the people directly, because these options listed above specifically are not available to them. Obviously they can always break out a stick and a hammer and enforce their rule, but this doesn't scale very well, which is exactly why they work so hard to control the systems of transactions and the fundamental creation of money, its 1000x easier to appear as if you've done no harm, if you can swap direct violence, to indirect fraud. Bitcoin doesn't solve violence directly, but it does absolutely change the *economics* of violence and the ability to impose unjust and tyrannical laws on the people. It's very much like copyright and file sharing. Sure they can play a never ending game of whack-a-mole and make people not want to share files, but if they can't stop the technology itself, on a long enough timeline they've lost the war.
Your examples suggest that what I have explained is correct and that those limits absolutely remain in place, because you have only come up with things the govt can do *within* those limits - which is my point. Govt cannot inflate #Bitcoin, they cannot edit its history, they cannot freeze accounts, they cannot stop transactions, they cannot turn off the network... all they can do is *attack people,* which will mean the trillions in economic theft they they've had the luxury of doing as a massive, quiet, backdoor fraud; into one that can only stay afloat with guns and whips, and the people will slowly hate them all the more for it. This is exactly how revolutions get started. There is zero chance that they keep stealing the amount that they do if it has to be taxed directly from the people.
The govt spends ~60% of the total US working population's income. Good luck getting them to directly tax that.
It scales as well as and as easy as controlling transactions on your fiat bank account. Sure I can send anyone bitcoins without permission, but those bitcoins become worthless to the recipient if the govnt taints the bitcoin address. This is the problem. Coins get tainted and Bitcoin is not fungible. Cash is more fungible. Its hard to trace tainted notes, its easy to trace Bitcoin, software already does this very effectively.