Then Bitcoin wouldn't be Bitcoin as I knew it anymore.
I disagree. Bitcoin would still be bitcoin. Just because some tyrannical government wants to spy on all its citizens' every move, does not make bitcoin any less bitcoin.
Still, this kind of thing is already in the pipeline, as I mentioned in the quote OP provided. The most recent development I am aware of is the government trying to force people who use centralized exchanges to perform KYC for their withdrawal addresses. Then a bunch of crypto developers who should have known better designed and implemented an entire protocol to help with that, known as AOPP. Thankfully due to community backlash the majority then dropped their support:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5383299.0-snip-
As usual, a stupid strawman from franky1 since at no point did I say anything even close to what he is claiming. What I said was:
I agree, and the mandatory question right at the top of Form 1040 is just the beginning.
Here's Form 1040:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdfThe very first question after you name, address, SSN, etc.:
At any time during 2021, did you receive, sell, exchange, or otherwise dispose of any financial interest in any virtual currency?
And as I said, this is the
beginning. Given that governments want exchanges to only process withdrawals to KYC linked addresses, then it is quite clear that they want to move to a system where everyone's bitcoin holdings are known to them, and that private addresses are a thing of the past.