[scottiebarnes]

> Sure. Now show me a human economy that's a closed system! We meat-sacks love our groceries, movie tickets, &c.

Yes, you're not required to identify yourself when you purchase those things. So a transaction between two parties for the exchange of goods would be private. I can send money to my mom and you'll never know.

> As we've seen with every single legal exchange, this isn't true: you only need to identity the coins themselves as having been laundered or obtained from/otherwise mixed with the produce of a crime, and nobody will accept your money.

No one can stop an address from receiving from another address. You can implement tracing and enforcement to make it difficult for a particular transaction within a particular jurisdiction, but this is a function of social implementation, not the network. And if you want even more anonymity, look into Monero.

> "Just change the protocol" has worked out famously well for every cryptocurrency so far ;-)

Not sure what you mean by that. I think the proliferation of competing ideas and forks is a good thing. Most projects are bad, but over time only the strong will survive.