I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.
How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.
Before any government could parade you then you must have done something that's incriminating and this case it's simple that the developers ain't doing anything that goes against or is inimical to the next neighbor. For example; would the government go on to press charges or arraign a cooperate organization that's producing guns all because someone on the street use(bought) a gun developed by the company to murder somebody. I don't think so! So the issue of money laundering and terrorism is far fetched to be a problem from developers corner but rather a choice of users.
So I don't see reasons why crypto developers should hide for anonymity except the CBDC are nurturing an ulterior different from what you're making, perhaps to get ride of competition totally from the market.
A government can legislate that developing "cryptocurrencies" enables money laundering, terrorism and whatnot, and suddenly any developer is under threat ot being arrested if they are not anonymous. Of course any developed democracy would need to go throught various procedings to get such a thing done, but it's not impossible, and it's definitely possible in totalitarian regimes like Russia, China and whatnot (not to mention North Korea, where I sometimes cannot even fathom this nightmare state actually exists)