There is only a single thing I get out of this whole situation. Wasabi was pressured and cornered by some authority and it was a disappear or comply type of situation. I get Wasabi wanted from a business perspective to continue as earnings I suppose were not negligible.
That's actually true:
18. You already said this isn't the case; so you don't have to confirm or deny if this happened; but if we're being skeptic, we have to consider the idea that you were pressured by authorities after all, with an extra clause that you're not allowed to say anything about it. Did you ever consider that a privacy-enhancing service would sooner or later be targeted and pressured by authorities? Other similar services explicitly made sure from the beginning that the creators and developers are anonymous, pseudonymous or generally unknown, to make sure such pressure can't be exterted on the project. Actually, satoshi himself may have left Bitcoin to remove such a central point of failure (through pressure on the creator).
Answer: Information about pressures will be posted later. Satoshi is one of the few people who have actually stayed anonymous and left the project. Otherwise, I’m not sure who you mean. Working on a privacy project in today's day and age is very risky. If the project succeeds and grows, it’s only a matter of time before the people involved get harassed. This is expected and that’s why it’s important that we build as much as we can before the worst comes. Even though there’s not necessarily a law forbidding a privacy focused business, it’s only a matter of time before regulators find a way to try to shut the project down.
We want to try to distance ourselves from these problems as much as possible, by avoiding unnecessary negative attention.Someone might nit-pick here and say: "But he said 'it's only a matter of time before regulators ... shut the project'", but that's missing the point. Why would they be having these concerns after all these years of running without censorship, if somebody was not already harassing your company about it?