But "mass-adoption" or at least majority-adoption is something that is ultimately necessary. Without it, any transaction running on the "privacy-chain" will cause suspicion and possibly sanctions - as opposed to the chain which grants goverments and institutions easy access, as does Bitcoin right now.
That's why I'd like to see 'privacy as default'; I don't see mixing and CoinJoining becoming the default, because as soon as they get popular enough for authorities to worry, they will start cracking down on them. Look at Tornado Cash and Wasabi / zkSNACKS.
They can't 'crack down' on Bitcoin as a whole (which they had to if we got default privacy on L1).
Well, I couldn't agree more. Just reading some replies on this topic, though, clearly shows the dilemma a L1-privacy solution is facing:
- Most people don't care about privacy -> hard to convince the, that it's really necessary to update the Bitcoin protocol accordingly
- combined with the monetary incentives involved and the fear of governments starting a crackdown on Bitcoin as soon as privacy was to be an integral part of its protocol (fear is a strong force)
- miners and nodes are ultimately the ones deciding to go with such a software update or not - most of them ofc want to maximize profit; will they take that risk?
They can't crack down on Bitcoin because it is decentralized not because it doesn't have default privacy on L1.
What do you think about my theory that they are not cracking down right now on Bitcoin because it offers transparency and they are not cracking down on Monero because it is not used yet enough to matter?
Yes, I think that's definitly a big part of the equation. Monero already has a hard time when it gets to buying or trading it on mainstream exchanges. Sure, if you do some basic research it's still easy. But for the majority it's not even on their radar - so the active threat for central banks and governments is still almost neglectable. Even though, there were (and probably are) clearly efforts on the way to reduce Monero's potential power further.
Cracking down on Bitcoin is very simple. All you need to do is outlaw it due to 'extremely high levels of illicit use'. Throw in there the worst words you possibly can next to 'illicit', such as infantile, guns, terrorism et cetera and you have a huge hoard of people who are soon to ASK the Government to do something about it. How hard is it to do this?
What I noticed in recent news reports over the last 2+ years or so on mainstream media, is a very critical look at Bitcoins power consumption. So my guess would be, that the "CO2-footprint" of BTC will be the ultimative killer-argument to release heavy sanctions on any bitcoin related businesses - if the real threat (immutable, decentralized, private, borderless payment method & store of value) becomes too big to handle for governments.
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see the eBay-links on tg recently which are not deleted by eBay
