Anyone who believes that Monero wouldn't be treated much harsher than Bitcoin by governments is delusional.
The government hates competition. When the people are not behaving according to the gov wants, in the end the just have to kill everybody, and then themselves, and then the bankers rule the world.
No sarcasm, this is the plan. But we are not there yet. In the current environment, there is no repercussion strong enough available for governments that would put the information (blockchain) back to the Pandora's box. Because it cannot be done.
We have been taught to love governments. But consider by whom - people who think they are dependent of governments (your parents), institutions dependent by governments (kindergarten, school, everything else you attended prior to reaching drinking age and even then), media, dependent of government. There can be good or bad governments, the one we currently have is quite simple, because nearly all governments in the world are plants, tools, of and for people in the position of world domination already.
"But he said to them, 'The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors.'"
I wrote to Jorge about bitcoin - 100,000 people treasure it so much as to actually need and use it to escape (this) tyranny. Another few million try to make a quick buck, and 7+ billion continue "baa, baaaa".
Actually I prefer to asses the regulatory risk of a crypto currency based on the actual rulings and statements provided by relevant government agencies rather than based on third party comments that are more often than not misleading if not outright wrong.
The suppression agency arm of the Bankster world domination scheme (combined name of all the world governments
) is already spending 2-4 orders of magnitude more resources in suppressing XMR than the XMR developers are using for developing it. The battlefield is human mind, media, perception - if they can paint it bad (illicit drugs - of which many are useful to very useful for most people in general and treating sicknesses (cannabis), some are for party use, or for working harder and can be used to tailor your short-term state (amphetamine), some are deadly dangerous, not for the users but for the governments because they make people understand things even at the first dose (LSD), also good for treating mental disorders of many kind), then they sort of win, because people start parroting how it is bad.
But that's not necessarily the case. They may also lose: using a mobile phone while driving was tried to be outlawed, people just ignored it. Why?
Their perception of the harmfulness of the thing being outlawed did not reach the critical level, also the group could not be marginalized because it was the majority already.For the same reason, cannabis will be legalized in a swoop in the next 10 years almost everywhere. It makes people feel less anxious about their situation, which is good because the banksters can rob them faster, but the main reason is, because keeping it illegal erodes the remaining confidence in the government and its systems.
Every person who truly
ignores government and all it does, is deadly dangerous to them (typically not at all to himself, nor the others, despite the government's claims to the contrary
), and the network of prisons and mental institutions worldwide is awaiting to store them.
But it's not isolated cases anymore. Some say the age of martyrs is just starting, but it also may be ending. You don't really know. AFAIK, high level bitcoiners have mainly been threatened by government, and their freedom of communication has only been cut by threats, not by steel. How the world reacts to bitcoin advocates being put behind bars in solitary confinement (Martin Armstrong, "terrorists"), or to death, remains to be seen.
In the short term, you can choose to care about the legal situation, if you are good in that game.
I am not, because I honestly don't care about them. I cannot make myself think that they are important to me, and this background is very poor for analysing their moves. Board games are better because I know and care about my opponents, they are my friends.
My general idea is that in this society, there cannot be "war against crypto". It is just too vague an enemy, and many gov people are in it themselves.
It is maybe the same as other bogus enemies, like drugs, (child) porn, tax evasion, using a mobile when you drive, ...
Their only reason of existence in the legal code is to:
1) keep people anxious and depressed due to the sheer number of regulations that they must adhere to, and the incomprehensibility of them
2) provide skeletons in the closet for all people, so that if they reach a position of power, yet start to think and act independently, they can be replaced by using this "new" "scandal" information that just surfaced from NSA servers.
I'm just a humble guy who was living a very modest and financially small life in 2008, and suddenly the banks attacked me using the Finnish government as a tool, by raiding my home without my invitation. Fucking idiots! Without that, I would still know not 5% of what I do now. Every drug, child porn, tax evasion, terrorism, mobile phone, etc. related charge against me from now on is their (crafty or feeble, only the history knows) attempt to make my releasing of this kind of info difficult.
From my own experience I know that it is possible to make a lifelong enemy of a man by using force against him when
he does not feel it is fair. This is the reason I believe the banks cannot win this one. It's like a card in card game that when attacked, gains +2X (where X is the damage inflicted by the attack), and when killed, resurrects 10 cards of equal value.
So my exhortation is to respectfully ignore each and everyone, who infringes your use of crypto. Or your life, for that matter.