A majority of the people involved in cryptocurrency, especially the earlier adopters, got into the crypto space for two main reasons; the technology or to break away from the government. Most recently, it's seen as a get rich quick market, but a 3-month bear market crushed those false dreams.
The attempt has been to provide a technological alternative to currency and banking that would allow the people to control their money. A Laissez-faire attitude for an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies.
Is having centralized banking supervision a feature or a problem?
To have the freedom to do what you want with your money makes a lot of sense, but some of those early adopters wanted to move money around without being tracked by the government. Some did shady things that we all learned about with the silk road and the dark web. Most of us had never heard of the dark web till Silk Road was shut down in November of 2014.
Ever since 2014 there has been increasing talk about how cryptocurrency needs regulation so that it can become mainstream.
Before 2014 it made sense that Bitcoin could be a currency, it didn't move +/-10% a day. Now we see the volatility of an unregulated market. This instability in the market scares the average person, and so they stick with what they feel they understand or can rely on being more consistent.
There are more and more HODLers that want to see the price increase, and for that to happen quickly, you need sizeable institutional money to get involved.
Does price increase outweigh what many saw as self-ownership and global free-market?
The use of blockchain technology is growing as more businesses realize the potential of the technology. There is a story every day about a real-world application for blockchain outside of the cryptocurrency space. Still, money is at the core here and having more knowledge and information about what is happening with the currency seems like something a lot of people would want to know.
Since blockchain ledgers are tracking all these transactions, it never made sense to me that you'd prefer to use Bitcoin or Litecoin for illegal activities over cash because there is a record. Similar to how a bank keeps a log of credit card transactions. That's a lot of collected data and information that seems like the opposite of what you would want if you don't want anyone to know about a transaction or money changing hands.
The Government doesn't want to get more involved to protect the individual investor they want to get involved to track you more closely. Moving away from a cashless society provides more information about purchasing habits and how much money we are making. The Government wants to know this, Amazon & Facebook want this information and Visa and MasterCard don't want to let go of the data they have.
It's not too hard for someone to get your credit card number but it's harder for them to use it on a purchase that your bank or credit company isn't going to see as out of the ordinary. We have all likely received an alert from our bank on a purchase that was out of our regular buying habits. It's great when you didn't make that purchase but concerning when you did, and you're not allowed to spend your money as you see fit and have to wait a little while until it's approved.
Now that government is getting more involved, are we heading into a more 1984 sort of mindset? Or will we see privacy become an essential topic in the space with coins like Monero?
Both sides are butting heads, and it seems like it's going to be a battle that's only just getting started.