I think the moment has passed on the issue of control. Regulation and strict prohibitive measures can only lead to a negative effect in the cryptocurrency field and, as a consequence, from there such capital somewhere where there are softer laws and clear rules of the game. As for the governments, but more often than not people are sitting there who are far enough from the idea of how it works and how it works, so they often make the wrong sharp steps, instead of detailed comprehension.
In my opinion the level of control of bitcoin ecosystem grows every day and one day it will become almost fully controlled. Moreover it is necessary for Bitcoin to be controlled to become legal everywhere and to collect its full cost. There are some introductory points I believe in:
1. Nowadays, Bitcoin is first of all money, not technology. I mean that some when in 2009-2012 it was just technology, later it got its cost, later in 2013-2014 it's cost grew about 100 times and Bitcoin began its movement from world of "computer geeks" to world of money. Later in 2017-2018 where was one more crucial moment. After that world bank system began to assume Bitcoin as money entity.
2. The fiat monetary system is fully controlled by world bank system and governments. This system is based on Bretton Woods system with USD as main world's currency.
3. These institutions have great (I believe - the greatest in the world) power and they will never allow any uncontrolled money to exist.
From the other hand let's take a closer look at Bitcoin technology.
1. Decentralization (especially for Bitcoin) is myth. Because:
a) Since 2016-2017, when Antminer S9 was produced, Bitmain became the monopolist in mining chip development. Their chips were built on top of technology and were the most energy effective and as far as I know nothing changed today from point of view mining chip development. We have only one company that produces economic effective mining chips.
b) Today hashrate is so big that you are unable to launch any significant hashing power if you are not great player with great money. Let's make simple calculations with the most optimistic (cheap) scenario. Today hashrate is about 180 EH/s = 180 000 000 TH/s. The newest Antminer S19 PRO has hasrate 110 TH/s and its price was 2600$ (today it's more than 5000$). And its electrical power is 3250 Watt. Lets assume that all hashing power is based on this model of ASIC (chip). So the cost of all mining equipment is 180 000 000 / 110 * 2600 = 4 254 543 800$ (4,2 billion USD). Summary electrical power is 180 000 000 / 110 * 3250 = 5318179750 (5.3 GWatt). And it is the most optimistic scenario for energy consumption, and I'm sure not bad scenario by equipment price.
So if you want to launch 10% hashrate farm you'll have to buy equipment for 420 million USD, and you'll need a power plant with power of 530 MegaWatt.
I know these calculations are not accurate, but they can help us just to estimate the scale of mining process.
2. Anonymity is myth. All transactions can be seen by everybody. All you need is to map addresses to persons. I understand that it is impossible to map 100% addresses, but I'm sure it is not necessary. In statistical terms if you can map for example 30% of addresses it will be enough. And all is going to it:
A federal court in the United States has authorized the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to serve a "John Doe Summons" on the crypto exchange Kraken, seeking identities of U.S. taxpayers who have used cryptocurrency, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday....https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-court-authorizes-irs-seek-identities-taxpayers-who-have-used-cryptocurrency-2021-05-05/3. There are many systems like crystalblockchain (
https://crystalblockchain.com/) are under development. Their purpose - deanonymize addresses
4. Lightning technology makes Bitcoin similar to classic monetary system - there can be "banks" with their lightning channels for inner transactions.
All of these make me believe that today is the beginning of control era. And control is not a bad thing for Bitcoin as money entity. Because without control it can not become "real" money