Transactions on the wallet and exchanges can be tied to identifiers like IP, browser fingerprint, email accounts, bank accounts etc with a little dragnet surveillance of the type the NSA already participates in. Your opsec is not as good as you think it is, and how good was it several years or even 10 years ago? By the time you know you're being targeted, it's too late to up your game. This is how they caught Dread Pirate Roberts, and this is how they'd catch you.

If the government was interested in your illegal transactions, they would find you, and they would take everything you own in recompense if they wished. Your 'anonymous' wallet will not save you if cryptocurrencies actually become important.

If you want to stop that, you need to consider what a revolution entails - civil disobedience and breaking unjust laws en masse and standing up to the state in the real world, not just in code.

Ross Ulbricht used his name directly in accounts linked to development of Silk Road. I agree with you that people will pretty much always slip up a little bit, but that example is someone that barely thought about what they were doing, not someone that slipped up.

So did the OP on this thread while giving advice on and advocating dodging tax.

I have some sympathy as I have the same approach to online identity (don't bother as anonymity simply isn't realistic), but if working for a company that recently had to flee US jurisdiction I'd be more circumspect about advocating breaking the law!

It's almost impossible to be anonymous to a nation state even if you try harder than us anyway, and most people slip up early and often - you won't know you want to hide from a state till it is too late in most cases.

You are comparing a drug kingpin to normal transactions for commerce. The state cannot attack small amounts. You are dreaming of a dragnet that does not and IMO cannot exist.

The dragnet already exists. Look up Tempora in the UK for one example - everything you do online is recorded and can be linked to transactions retrospectively, bank account, blockchain records, ISP records, email, there are so many vectors to find you that it would not be hard if you ever make significant money to come after you.

Though given you are posting your thoughts on defying the state and avoiding taxes in detail under your real name here and probably elsewhere, I'm not sure dragnet surveillance would be required.

You are under the impression that I’m flippant with what I say, as if operating in this industry for as long as I have, and dealing with various regulators for years, hasn’t trained me to be careful! Any government agent can feel free to google me! And go fuck themselves.