Even if cryptocurrencies weren't a giant scam - and in fairness, at the beginning, they weren't - did you really think the governments of the world would just idly let randos take control of money out of their hands?

I refer you to Amschel Rothschild's famous quote:

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!

I'm actually surprised that the authorities around the world have tolerated crypto for so long. It probably has something to do with corruption, and the fact that it's really just a scam and not sustainable in the long run.

To be fair, the author has a good point, but we knew this was coming, and Bitcoin did nothing to prevent it. Monero, however, did.

Surveillance state adds suveillance🙃

It's the equivalent of farmers voting for trump and getting screwed over, Bitcoin bros are next in line

it's never lupus lookin ass

As reminder crypto are being centralized so it is looking more like traditional finance. Coinbase holds over 12% of all Bitcoin and 11% of staked Ether.

https://coinlaw.io/coinbase-users-statistics/

It's my understanding that Monero actually provide anonymous transactions.

big deal, and fascism. NATO colonies copying the fascism is to be expected. Spirit of 2nd amendment is spirit of right to resist.

Patriot Act's name is meant to distract from fascist powers within it, and while bitcoin is not super anonymous if you use techniques that are now recommended to "crackdown", there is improvement.

Bitcoin's superiority over gold is the ability to move to a more welcoming jurisdiction without border confiscation, or luggage weight, concerns, and so US/Colonies crackdown on "definancialization rights" may well lead to wealth drain from the empire.

Ironically this does not prevent technologies like Monero from becoming the next big platform; nor will it really prevent people from evacuating their coins to a more private and self-custodial wallet.

In general it really only puts a few more onerous steps into the equation where there will be fences and people who are expected to digitally mule bitcoin around.

In the same manner that organized criminals work around modern financial regulations aimed at capturing them; they can also work around regulations surrounding Bitcoin itself; and once the Bitcoin itself is fenced off into a Monero or other privacy preserving coin; it will remain there 'burned' or get 'laundered' by a group of gang members a few hundred times to re-mint coins clean enough to be re-deposited and re-used in the same manner.

It won't matter in the long run that they are tracking the provenance of every satoshi. Especially not if it's far too common that anyone making a suspicious move turns out to be a privacy conscious, law-abiding, yet innocent citizen.

that is hilarious and completely negates the entire point of why bitcoin was made in the first place.

Conservatives ruin everything. Lol. But to be honest, bitcoin is just a big scam.