Comment by dbetteridge
17 hours ago
Which is completely irrelevant because as the government of the country they have the power to make laws, now and in the future which compel private entities to perform actions like AML (anti money laundering) and KYC (know your customers).
The end result is private entities taking money out of the system at some stage, and it doesn't shield you in any way from government incompetence or malice.
"They could theoretically seize control of everything anyway, so we should just let them seize control of everything now without a fight" doesn't seem like a great argument to me.
Things like the constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and decentralized control of communication and commerce serve as bulwarks against tyranny. That they all could be dismantled in the future is not an argument against doing our best to preserve them now. Tyranny is not a binary state, it's a gradient with many steps along the path thereto.
(Also, "taking money out of the system" is not optional; payment systems cost money to maintain whether it's done by a private entity or by government.)
Suppose you have an actually decentralized payment system, like cash, or any digital system that preserves the same properties whether or not it involves a blockchain.
An example of one that doesn't would be a global decentralized protocol for transferring money. You're standing in a coffee shop in LA and want to pay for a coffee so you tell your bank to transfer $5 to their bank. It works the same if your bank is in Brazil and their bank is in Switzerland as if both banks are in Nebraska, involves no intermediary other than each party's bank, and their bank shows them the transfer immediately so they know to give you the coffee.
Then the panzers roll into Washington and der Führer wants to reintroduce financial surveillance to make sure nobody is covertly buying a computer that doesn't censor the internet. Obviously they can force the bank in Nebraska to inform on the dissidents, but your bank is in Brazil and the seller's bank is in Switzerland.
Unless the system allowing that is dismantled ahead of time so the dystopia can be switched on overnight instead of needing years to erode entrenched decentralized infrastructure.