I see very interesting opinions in the thread, and rather than commenting on some of the aspects that you have mentioned, I wanted to share my personal experience with something that I see a parallel with and that has been going through my head a lot lately.

If I remember correctly I started playing poker online in 2009. At that time poker houses, and I understand that online gambling houses in general, either had a license to operate from a tax haven or operated without a license. No one sees a parallel with crypto gambling houses today?

If someone asked about taxation of poker profits in a poker forum, everyone said that there was a legal obligation to declare, and that they declared everything they earned, even though it was practically impossible for the states to know anything about their earnings unless the deposits and withdrawals were made by international transfer, which would take a long time and would probably be blocked by the bank because they were transfers to and from tax havens.

We were in the midst of the crisis that began in 2007/08 and until then the states had not paid much attention to online gambling, because before the bubble burst, the economy was doing very well (or rather we can say, it was super-inflated).

When the bubble burst, states started looking for money everywhere and one of the things that were targeted were online gambling houses.

Long story short, the result was quite disastrous. In part I understand that it is logical that the states ended up regulating the game and charging taxes for it, the problem is that in some cases they did it in the worst possible way, compartmentalizing a market that was once global.

We could say is good that today the states charge taxes for online gambling, which is logical, the bad part was killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: there are fewer and fewer players, houses give less and less rakeback, the tables are getting harder and harder. This has been an inexorable trend with the exception of 2020 when lockdowns made a lot of people decide playing online poker while having a few beers.

I suppose that it is partly because I have lived through this experience that I am pessimistic regading the possible EU crypto payments regulation, although something similar does not have to be repeated, but it makes me think that in the end legislation will be implemented that will allow the states to continue collecting taxes and will greatly attack privacy, and it is not that the states of the EU are characterized precisely by having a great libertarian movement that can oppose this type of regulations.