[fragmede]

except for that damned ledger. cash has the advantage of being much harder to trace. (I won't go as far as to say traceless, as the bills serial numbers could be recorded at scale.) A digital record of every transaction made is the DEA and IRS' wet dream. Mixers exist but don't address the underlying issue.

[npoc]

The base layer of bitcoin (the bitcoin network) needs to be at least pseudo-anonymous in order to validate the supply issuance. But there's nothing stopping higher level networks implementing privacy. Lightning does a good job already. A network based on something like Monero could also be used, with bitcoin as the token. I don't see this as an issue. Bitcoin can be an anonymous as we need it to be in order to gain acceptance.