I want to discuss the vision of bitcoin future. One of the main idea of Bitcoin was decentralization, but now we can see that all hashrate is concentrated in pools, which works under some jurisdiction, pay taxes, burn electricity - they are legal. As far as bitcoin becomes more and more legal in different countries the governments will be going to control it.
The good thing is that at the first hint of control and strangulation from local governments, mining operators are already starting to look for areas/countries wherein this problem is non-existent. Just look at mining operators from China and Russia for example. Some have moved to other parts of Europe and some have decreased their gears on the said countries and moved the bulk of their equipment elsewhere. Like you and me, most miners do not want to be dictated on what to do and how much do they want to give the government for taxes. They simply move and settle elsewhere.
Lets imagine that pools have some blacklist of addresses for which they do not process transactions. This list can be presented from some international bitcoin control organization (it's just imagination for now!) that, for example, fights with financing of terrorism. As pools are legal organizations they will have to do what they were said.
Worse scenario is that pools will be able to proceed only whitelists of addresses and legal lightning channels.
As pools control almost all hashrate there will not be any real chance to find block outside the pool.
I think bitcoin is potentially very colt controlled thing. What do you think about it ?
People can easily circumvent this by creating new addresses. That
simple. Also, given the whole address space of bitcoin is 2^160, that's literally inexhaustible and no amount of law enforcement can ever comprehend just how many that number is really in the real world. While measures would surely be put into place to combat money laundering and fraud in the space, I think it would not extend more than that since it's practically impossible to contain bitcoin and its working parts individually or as a whole. Bitcoin is, by design, fragmented and decentralized so as to avoid being manipulated and controlled by a central entity, and I think it has the capabilities to live true of its design.