Nothing about that person changed. The door did not change. What changed is that closing it now means something.
Some setup, because this only makes sense with the floor under it. Most public blockchains, Bitcoin included, are open ledgers. An open ledger means every payment is written down in a place anyone can read, forever. Privacy on those networks is something you add on top, with extra tools, on purpose. That is what optional means here. It is available, and hardly anyone reaches for it.
I think optional privacy is weaker than it sounds, and the reason has nothing to do with the tools being poorly built. Twelve people using a privacy feature are twelve people wearing a flag. The feature works exactly as designed and still makes its users easier to pick out, because the crowd they needed in order to blend in never showed up.
The fair counterargument is that networks change all the time. Bitcoin has changed. Blocks, scripts and signatures have all been upgraded by people who cared and did the work, so calling the first version sacred is being stubborn with extra steps.
I would separate two things. Changing a parameter means adjusting a number inside a system that already agrees on what it is for. Changing a property means asking the system to be a different kind of thing than the one everybody showed up for. The first happens on a schedule. The second turns into a decade of argument, and that argument is rarely about personalities. It is the original design pushing back.
What would show me wrong: a large network bolting privacy on afterward and getting most of its ordinary users onto it within a few years. Most users, not most developers, and not most of the loud accounts.
Bitcoin was built so anyone can check it, and that openness is why you can verify your own money instead of asking someone for permission. It was a real choice with a real cost, and the cost lands on privacy. I would rather say that plainly than wait for a later patch to fix it for us.
if this gave you something to chew on, Zap ⚡
