exactly. My senator told me that this thing was not really used, was being discontinued, and there was no evidence that any banks or processors we discriminating based upon it.

However I am sure that banks were indeed discriminating based upon it, in some cases refuses accounts, in other cases charging higher fees. Taking advantage of marginalized access to banking based upon 'possible scrutiny as laid out by the choke point initiative'

There may not be any evidence in that they can refuse service or raise rates and blame this or whatever that, however lets be real. The govs telling private money handlers if they touch money that was part of these things we don't like, err, have a higher chance of fraud, then we will send fed investigators to investigate you - well...

here is a list from the linked wiki mentioned in parent comment, partial / edited,

    Ammunition Sales
    Cable Box De-scramblers
    Coin Dealers
    Dating Services
    Drug Paraphernalia
    Escort Services
    Firearms Sales
    Fireworks Sales
    Government Grants
    Life-Time Memberships
    Mailing Lists/Personal Info
    Money Transfer Networks
    On-line Gambling
    Pharmaceutical Sales
    Pornography[5]
    Racist Materials
    Surveillance Equipment
    Telemarketing
    Tobacco Sales
    Travel Clubs

We do indeed need better ways for people to use decentralized payment options like bitcoin cash, or , zcash, monero and similar. However from what I had seen some time ago, the hard part is getting money into the coin. Using CC or banks for this makes it harder in the US than I think it should be.