okay I thought about it a little bit more.
I should know better than to be so dismissive of your opinion lol.
Even if chain analysis assigns a risk score to every UTXO, if the market treats them as equivalent, then they are still fungible.
so rather than seeing things as black and white like I was trying to do, we should look at the market dynamics
🙏
Also if it were absolutely fungible (private) then we would enter the outlaw phase much earlier and it would have much less chance of surviving. There would be no market demand for chainalysis because no regulated entity would be allowed to touch it in the first place.
And if it did manage to be successful despite being fully private it would become a victim of its own success because privacy at scale benefits large corrupt groups more than it benefits individuals.
A conscious society worthy of the name would flourish both on a transparent as well as a private standard.
Since the world is not perfect and never will be, we will have to live with degrees of freedom.
In the past (tribal society) everything was public, besides thoughts. Most of societies advances including ever more sophisticated rug pulls and countermeasures are based on privacy advancements.
Societies will thrive where privacy is a guaranteed default for individuals while trusted groups can openly share all information between each other for a social relationship net.
I understand that transparency is a necessary property for a first mover in a new space like this. beyond the regulation aspect, user simply wouldn't trust it as a store of value.
but it harms users if they misunderstand and think that it's actually fungible.
If you make something and sell it for bitcoin do you care about the UTXO history? What do you specifically care about or what in its history would make you reject the trade?
if one must sell the Bitcoin to an regulated exchange to pay my fiat bills, one might care.
it's easy to see how the network could bifurcate into KYCed and non.
I personally do not care because I do not interact with the regulated entities.
So it’s a hypothetical problem for other people rather than a problem you have experienced yourself.
The network has already bifurcated, the KYC “fork” is permissioned and negates the entire value proposition of Bitcoin. The market will eventually price coins on this fork accordingly.
point taken. but really, how hypothetical is it?
it remains to be seen which "fork" the market considers valid.
and so far all the friction and difficulty for market participants is on the nonKYC fork.
