Well, technically you always had to pay your taxes
The biggest exchange was Mt.Gox, and it required verification for larger amounts as well.
Developers of genuinely awesome stuff, that don't ask people to buy in using funds, can make whatever they want anonymously. In the early days, a new altcoin was very severely judged if it was pre-mined. If people want to ask for tons of cash, with no upfront work, unlike Satoshi they may need to show their credentials.
I think there are lots of crypto to crypto exchanges that don't need KYC.

There were a few positive things that have been shut-down and that will be missed.
There were a lot of betting websites that weren't blocked to people from the US. Satoshi Dice for example and betting on outcome style websites.
The one that shutdown that made me the saddest was one with bitcoin denominated stocks. We could have had our own stock markets.


I'm generally happy with where things are now. If you put some legwork in, you can do all the things that you could do in the early days, perhaps except for mining and getting some btc through faucets.

I wanna see a bitcoin stock market again though.