Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.
Privacy protocol changes would probably be best thing for some people or nightmare for others, but it's hard to imagine that happening right now.
I think mimblewimble has some chances to be implemented in BTC like it was for LTC, but this is only optional and most people probably wouldn't even use it like that.
Maybe we could see some better second layer solutions for privacy, or some wallets that couldn't be stopped by regulators.
And this uncovers the weakest link in the chain of buying/sellng crypto: Sure, the crypto itself may be pseudonymous, but exchanges make the rules as to which users are "good" and which users are "bad". And we can't count on governments to step in and correct this because they are being lobbied by exchanges to do otherwise. They are basically the wild west of crypto.
We could always use bitcoin for trading p2p without third parties, but I guess there wouldn't be enough liquidity (mostly fake) that would attract big players and big capital.
As long as we have governments acting like our babysitters, we are going to have corruption and power concentration that will affect bitcoin for sure.
What if Pmalek sends me his coins (that he got from a gambling site) for a
3D printed steel washer jig that I sold him; and then I want to deposit those BTC on Gemini? Gemini will easily be able to claim that I am the one who withdrew the coins from a gambling site and that I just shuffled them from one wallet to another in an attempt to hide their origin.
It depends how deep their detection software is going to search for Bitcoin connected with gambling, but they could always expend that to mixers, hacks, supporting truckers, sending coins to another country owner, etc.
This can go super crazy, especially with those carbon credits they are rolling out soon, this could soon become a living nightmare if we continue using centralized exchanges.
I like the idea of using offline paper bitcoin notes that could enable us to use this notes like cash, and nobody would find any online trace, until we spend BTC from that note.