The government has never been a fan of cryptocurrencies because it knows they undermind its control over money and its entire population. It is not a trend just of dictatorship but of all governments, including so-called democracies, which in the end are just fronts for your enslavement and the taxations of someone else's hard work to be given to those who want it instead of those who produce it.
Please make no mistake Bitcoin, as a peer-to-peer currency, will eventually run head to head with the government because, with the emission of fiat or money, the government gets much of its power. It is also how a bunch of people who didn't work gets to reach for what you work, otherwise called taxes. You will have to follow the rabbit hole to understand that little fact that many decide to ignore because they don't have the time to worry about it when they have to work 80 hours a week to bring food to the table each week.
US government or a branch of it sanctioned Tornado Cash, a mixing protocol on the Ethereum network. Now, the centralized parts of Ethereum are doing their best to approve those addresses and prevent access to many centralized services ETH offers before they have to go and freeze those accounts. At the moment, wallet services are blocking the usage of wallets, and so-called decentralized exchanges are trying their best to keep those addresses from trading.
Ethereum blockchain is enormous, and you need servers storage capacity and powerful computers to run that blockchain. It means those sanctioned by the US government will need to run their nodes to bypass wallet services providers like Metamask. And even if they manage to do that, they will find another pain point: exchange of their stolen goods to another cryptocurrency, which is even worse if they try to get into fiat.
With just a straightforward message, the US government made a bunch of money not good. I am not defending criminals, but that will eventually happen or could happen to anyone that holds cryptocurrencies. That time is not that far. Once the US dollars start to lose value and international citizens decide that getting worthless paper for goods and services is no good or no business, people will discover how evil a so-called democratically elected government can be.
Today is well known cyber criminals or groups. Still, tomorrow it can be the regular citizen for any reason. The government may not need any reason other than digital currencies are a threat to their money printing machine or because those that hold cryptocurrencies have certain political ideals that are not in favor of whoever sits at the government chair. Not to mention that those who received dust attacks will have a hard time trying to prove they have no relationship with the criminal group in the first place.
It would help if you verified before buying any project that you have all the needed information and that you are participating in cryptocurrency for the right reasons. You may never know when you could be declared a criminal. If a transaction you did years ago, even when it was legal at the time, could be considered illegal years down the line.
Bitcoin was not supposed to be a get-rich scheme. It was supposed to be peer to peer electronic cash system, but that also means at some point, you may have some issues with some government somewhere. Just remember that before thinking and depositing your money into exchanges.