Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the problem with regulating anonymous transactions is you don't know who's doing them Every government has departments of agents adept at tracing cash transactions. Bitcoin offers the advantage of total transactional transparency. Shady wallet? Trace back until you find a known wallet. An exchange, vendor, et cetera . Subpoena, find their counterparty, rinse and repeat. Best case: you find your guy. Consolation: mo…
Of course with enough effort and investment you can probably stop many things, the point is whether the increasing marginal costs of enforcement are worth it to the government and society. By that same argument, the US could round up every illegal immigrant and deport them, or every casual drug user and lock them up for life. We don't do that because it'd be ruinously expensive (not to mention immoral) and transform…
The same applies to cash. Investigating them is expensive. We don't bust the kid who fails to report the proceeds from their lemonade stand because (a) it's too small and (b) it's too mean.
> privacy coins + tumblers + crypto + VPNs + TOR will make it very hard for a government to punish motivated individuals
Analogs for each of these exist for cash. None of this is new, it's just shinier. (In any case, now you're talking about willful money laundering.)