Obviously I'm hoping for the opposite - that more people wake up the draconian suppression being forced on them and the volume of peer to peer trading massively increases - but given how little people seem to value their privacy or freedom, I'm not holding my breath.
"Scalability isn't important until it suddenly is. Decentralization isn't important until it suddenly is. Privacy isn't important until it suddenly is." — Some random Twitter guy.
There are two scenarios. One's that privacy suddenly becomes important, people dislike this situation that comes from these strict regulations and educate themselves. Peer-to-peer trading increases, centralized exchanging decreases and so fourth. The second is that nothing happens. People simply choke this down and move on their lives, in a more regulated manner, which sounds
much more probable.
This ignorance of the latter reminds me of how significant it is to have privacy on a protocol level.
But it has to be met with resistance, if everyone just rolled over we would have never had bitcoin.
Sure, but look what's the difference.
Having Bitcoin is not the same as
using Bitcoin. The former is like a "revolution from the sofa" while the latter is what's resistance needed for. And, even if it sounds pessimistic, I don't believe that people will rebel for their privacy. Yet, most don't even rebel for their debt-based money.