As long as you are able to off ramp, you don't need to care about merchants.
P2p trading platforms are unstoppable, no amount of surveillance will stop free black market trade of fiat and sats.
Look at monero: fully banned in the present and still useful and used in parallel economies.
The idea that mass adoption will make the State friendlier to bitcoin is just brain dead hopium.
« As long as you are able to off ramp » that’s exactly the issue. At best, off-ramp will be #KYC only and pervasive (look into the #TravelRule) and cash phased out.
Yes, parallel economies taking #crypto payments will still exist but how large and convenient will those be? Again, that brings up back to the question of adoption.
I agree that if for whatever reason they can’t restrict off-ramp then adoption would matter less but they are working hard at the task.
Sovereignty and privacy will never be easy and convenient. And it does not need to be.
If most people don't bother learning how then either:
A: they don't need freedom and are fine with their golden cages
B: they need it but are easy prey, soft targets that will eventually be controlled by authoritarians anyway.
