Concerns like privacy are in individual's own control.
But that doesn't mean people like me can't lament the general lack of interest in privacy that is growing throughout the population, can't advocate for people to take their privacy more seriously, can't become exasperated at those willing to give up their privacy for the promise of some airdropped garbage.
I get your point. I can see that people not educated about privacy leading to a general acceptance of the surveillance measures is allowing majority of the exchanges to get away with draconian measures. Kevin has also summed up the same sentiment quite well in his reply here:
I agree that more people coming in will help the ecosystem. But I'm trying to say that we may be just accepting too many invasive rules and laws. You may say I am against the law - yes! I am against the privacy-invasive law! I understand we need to have some regulations regarding BTC, but damn - back in 2017-2018 I wanted to join a stock trading website and I could without all the documents a KYC-enabled crypto exchange asked me for.
If adoption and usage of Bitcoin is important and privacy isn't, then Bitcoin is not for me anymore. I thought all three go together. If we have opposed thoughts and you say privacy isn't a concern for you while I say for me it is, the thing is that I am forced to let my privacy taken away while you are absolutely fine with it. I do not have a choice but to move to more inconvenient platforms that don't even have volume because otherwise I risk having my money abusively seized by an exchange obeying the laws you think are fine. And even then, you'd think I do not pay taxes because I wanted privacy. Do you think that's fair? I am not against the non-abusive laws. I am against forcefully taking my privacy away through the law.
I can understand this sentiment. When I said that bitcoin was not supposed to be completely private, what I meant is that its not bitcoin's job to ensure privacy as a feature. Addresses/ transactions have been traceable as always. What we have built AROUND it is the reason for dilution of privacy. Who built these ecosystems? Surely the erstwhile whales and bitcoiners have a role to play. These are the same people who talk about these issues but refuse to put the money where there mouth is. For trading, there is Bisq but to provide it with liquidity and usage is up to the users. If a Binance manages to garner much attention with trading shitcoins and becomes a "business leader", then that is just capitalism working.
Why can't a Bisq replicate the same form of success. Open source, built by HODLers and builders. ChipMixer has done that. Where are the others? There is BTCPay as an alternative to BitPay. They do not get the same attention because few people are educated about the need for privacy. We still have an ecosystem to ensure that people who want to treat bitcoin the way they want can actually do that. Privacy is one of the MANY goals of bitcoin. As people get educated more and more about privacy in general, they would be able to use bitcoin the way they want.
I'm not going to tell other people what bitcoin is or should be, but I'm also not going to stop advocating that people take their privacy seriously.
I get your point that Bitcoin advocacy should go hand in hand with privacy advocacy. I just get pissed when people take an elitist approach to it and bash newbies instead of showing them how they can use bitcoin and still keep their balls (KYC). Thanks Kevin and oeleo for making this a fruitful discussion. It also give an ideas why Theymos' has shown tacit support to Grin, a coin that incorporates MimbleWimble and has default privacy. Maybe, we should have a
dedicated section for Privacy issues as a sub for quality discussion as well as resources for newbies here at the forum.
Moderators, Can we Please, Please have that?? Make someone like @nullius a moderator for it. Have a few more people with real life experience living that life. (Where is Jameson Lopp when you need him)