Everytime there's a big criminal bust involving Bitcoin, and people's identities are revealed, the HODLers come out and say "We never said it was anonymous! The blockchain is public. Everyone can see it. We just claim it's permissionless!" Sorry, but that's garbage. Here's why...
The key reason that Bitcoin is now being pitched as "Digital Gold" is that it is seen as not a medium of exchange, but rather a store of value. But crucially, the question that must be asked is "what value is being stored?" /2
Different stores of value store different things. So for example, farmland is a store of value, not because its dollar value will necessarily remain stable over time, but because in the event of calamity or war, a farm is likely to be a source of safety and food 3/
Gold, historically, has done a decent job of storing purchasing power and so on... 4
IMO, the theoretical "value" that Bitcoin stores is the freedom to transact. If you're deplatformed from the banks because your views our unpopular, odious, or illegal, nobody in the Bitcoin ecosystem can prevent you from transacting 5/
So if Bitcoin can't offer anonymity to its users when they do, at times, have to transact, then it's useless, because if you can be identified by the government, then you can be punished and therefore de facto censored. 6/
Until true anonymity (or near anonymity) is developed into Bitcoin, it's still incomplete, and not delivering on its promise. So it's a lame defense to say "it was never meant to be anonymous." Nonsense. Without anonymity, there's no censorship resistance, and no store of value.
