[Legogris]

Capabilities to enforce regulatory compliance on permissionless chains is coming. You could, say, have zero-knowledge proofs in smart contracts that enforce that tokens representing security X can only be transferred if the receiving account has performed KYC and confirmed as an accredited investor in jurisdiction X, Y or Z, without leaking any PIIs that went Intl the verification.

Or more trivially, TPL for account tagging.

Microsoft's initiative on decentralized identity leveraging on the Bitcoin blockchains could be a component in this. Excellent podcast episode here: https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/what-bitcoin-did-107-m...

Not to say you're completely wrong, just that smart contracts can be used to enforce regulation rather than skirt it - like any tool the outcome depends on the intentions of the one wielding it. :)

[CryptoPunk]

I sincerely hope permissionless solutions make such permissioned solutions obsolete. There are people, who by accident of their place of birth, are not permitted to use permissioned financial systems.

[Legogris]

Yes. What many of the well-intentioned people (many with libertarian/cypherpunk/anarchist ideals) in the blockchain space are building now might become enablers of the perfect control system.

Zero-knowledge proofs or RingCTs? Great, require disclosure and reporting of proofs or view keys to the man, who will enforce it for all interacting parties.

"You can't enforce bans on running nodes"? Well, start enforcing strict control of the public IP space so everyone address has a responsible individual behind it and put severe penalties on unlicensed crypto/privacy enabled assets/what have you.

I am thinking more and more we need to seriously consider moving the web to something like I2P or Freenet before it's too late.