https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/project-titanium-eus-plan-decloak-cryptocurrency/"TITANIUM, which stands for Tools for the Investigation of Transactions in Underground Markets, is a three-year, €5 million ($5.5 million) project that will unite universities, private research firms and law enforcement agencies from the U.K., Germany, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland.
Project TITANIUM will develop tools and best practices for criminal investigations involving cryptocurrency in Europe, which, up to now, most law enforcement agencies have pursued on an ad-hoc basis.
The project plans to create forensic tools to spot clusters of addresses controlled by the same entity; identify mixers or tumbler addresses used for money laundering; crawl the webs, both clear and dark; and automate information gathering about illegal activities."
In the next few years I see privacy as being one of the major selling points for alternatives to Bitcoin.
(Unless Confidential Transactions are integrated into the Bitcoin Core code.)
Monero doesn't rely on any master nodes (which is a liability IMO) and already has exposure with people looking for privacy.
As people realize bitcoin mixing is not keeping them anonymous (in fact it may be doing the opposite) we should see a LOT of vendors on the clearnet and darknet continue to adopt payment in XMR.
If you don't own any Monero, buy a few coins or you may well regret it.