Do you really think after it is co-opted by the big banks and government, after they buy in and it becomes even more highly regulated than it is now, that they will go for privacy as an afterthought? I don't think so. That's like telling the bank after you open an account that you don't want them tracking your finances. For better or for worse, Bitcoin is no longer a currency, it has become a highly regulated, historically well-performing speculative asset. It's a good investment. It's not a private investment. Soon AI will be doing on-chain analysis so it will be even harder than it already is to transact privately on the public blockchain. I am sure the people from Samurai have a few things to say about how the gov likes Bitcoin having privacy as an afterthought.

I'll take "Things that will never happen" for $400 Alex.

I mean Saylor straight up says in the interview that there's no way adoption will happen if Bitcoin pursues strong privacy. You think power structures will allow it to happen AFTER they are heavily invested? We could hardly get Segwit. You think you're going to get Blackrock consensus on a hard fork to allow full chain membership proofs?

You can't update the protocol at that point because the economic nodes will never support that fork.

Devil's advocate: what if we do a hardfork of bitcoin that is private. Every holder gets an equivalent amount of private bitcoin and yes, the institutions dump and crash the price but we have instant wide distribution of a privacy coin. Where does my proposal fail?

If 90% of the node support it, they will have no choice.

Sadly the opposite is happening. Cores Devs taking money from Blackrock to put out core 30. Next comes KYC Bitcoin and the exchanges/retailers etc. will only accept your coins if they are"clean" Whole thing has been laid out already

I heard this theory 2-3 times here. Unfortunatelly I'm not able to review the code myself and understand the implication and I cannot just believe 2-3 random strangers on nostr (no offense) that "something bad is happening". I would not think that the majority of core devs are corrupted to the point of hurting what they work for and fight for after 15 years. I have never seen a deepth analysis explaining the situation with facts and objective arguments. Do you have anything to share?