The popular consensus on HN seems to be that the government having absolute monopolistic control and power over personal finance is inarguably good.
"But money laundering!" so?
"But evading taxes!" so?
You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits. Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and traceable just so it's easy for the government to arrest people is not a good tradeoff.
> Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and traceable
My transactions are not public, but that's because I don't use blockchain. This is a problem created by blockchain technologies. Services like Tornado Cash are a poor solution that introduces new problems (like making laundering much easier).
Traceability is indeed required for large transactions in most jurisdictions. Where the line for this should be drawn is debatable. I think it would be hard for society where all transactions are fully anonymous to function. It's too easy for bad actors to free-ride or otherwise take advantage of the situation. I would prefer a little more freedom/privacy here but it's definitely a situation with trade-offs in both directions.
Also, keep in mind that increasing privacy for financial transactions would disproportionately benefit those with the most money.
Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch of bytes, like this: `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`