What is mostly needed is not anonymity as it can bring about money laundering and terrorsm financing, which can be reduced while dealing with bitcoin, we have seen many cases of such when illicit Bitcoin is hijacked by the government, but yet, Bitcoin brings about privacy if we'll handled.
I'm interested to know, why exactly do you believe that anonymity is automatically linked to money laundering and terrorism financing? Take cash as an example: would it be fair to you if your government suddenly bans cash due to illicit activity, or would you worry?
While KYC is being abused and it supposes many potential threats for the individual, there are a few services where it seems legit to fulfil it, IMO.
Depends on which side you're sitting on. The Cypherpunks and raw, OG Bitcoin users are probably going to deny your point since Bitcoin is here to eliminate the need of third parties. I do get your point: you need to show yiur ID when exchanging fiat to fiat, right?
But the difference is that, unlike Bitcoin, Monero's traceability is as close to the traceability of cash as possible. When you enter the exchange, nobody knows how much you have in your wallet and where that comes from. When you leave it, nobody knows where your money is about to go. Bitcoin's public ledger allows that information to be analyzed.
The biggest myth is that Monero's transactions are not traceable, according to Spagni. He admits that there is no truly private cryptocurrency or transaction that cannot be made public.
Well, the US gov is looking for someone to trace txs and the closest they can really get is approximating in %. Obviously, Monero isn't
perfect just the same way Bitcoin isn't. However, they're working on it and it's the best privacy you can really get
by default.
You can still trace
very small and quite insignificant details about Monero transactions or be a malicious node/miner, although these issues can be easily fixed by running your own full node and jumping from address to address.