How could a rich existing power exert control over who and how someone uses bitcoin? There is no mechanism by which such control could be exerted.
The worst you can do is monitor traffic and try to correlate wallets and transactions to known identities and products similar to attacks on Tor, then use good old regular meat space violence. Privacy oriented coins like Monitor make this even harder, to literally impossible, too.
I suppose you could start mandating some central registry for wallets or some such and refuse to process any transactions not originating or destined to a registered wallet, but that would require a hard fork and people to willingly go with it.
Technically you don't even need miners, computers, or electricity to exchange cryptocurrency. You can just exchange scraps of paper with a key phrase printed on it that says "wallet contains X btc". The walled could have been emptied before the exchange and that would still require verification by looking at the chain, but otherwise it's perfectly doable, and literal bitcoins do exist.
Well, yes, of course you're right, but there's a world of difference between "technically" and what the reality is for most people.
Between what the EU seem to be doing and the prevalence of centralized exchanges, it seems like what you're describing is happening. But my point was really just that you could still buy yourself into a position of control, either by controlling the hashing power or otherwise. Nothing changes that.
Note I'm not anti-cryptocurrency, I'm just wary that much of the hype is unfounded. Maybe in theory based on correct things, but the reality isn't so clean. Personally, I'm hoping a privacy-oriented DeFi coin will take off. There are a few contenders in this space to watch.
The worst you can do is monitor traffic and try to correlate wallets and transactions to known identities and products similar to attacks on Tor, then use good old regular meat space violence. Privacy oriented coins like Monitor make this even harder, to literally impossible, too.
I suppose you could start mandating some central registry for wallets or some such and refuse to process any transactions not originating or destined to a registered wallet, but that would require a hard fork and people to willingly go with it.
Technically you don't even need miners, computers, or electricity to exchange cryptocurrency. You can just exchange scraps of paper with a key phrase printed on it that says "wallet contains X btc". The walled could have been emptied before the exchange and that would still require verification by looking at the chain, but otherwise it's perfectly doable, and literal bitcoins do exist.
Sounds familiar?