It sounds like to me that the argument isn't that an advanced technology will go back through the ledger and identify people. It's that once people have been identified/linked to a public wallet, it's really easy to determine how they spent bitcoin because the record is public and permanent.

I agree, but there are people who create bank accounts (and I'm sure Coinbase accounts) with fake ID and use them for illegal proceedings. So while we can trust that the transactions log is accurate, it doesn't always prove a link to an actual person. My concern is someone having their identity stolen (or even just impersonation), used for KYC, then being linked to crimes without any deniability at all.

Edit: like IP address and torrent lawsuits etc.

Plenty of Bitcoins have been sized. People don’t memorize their private keys, they store them somewhere. It’s quite hard to minimize the attack surface of your crypto currency without also risking the coins being lost.

Then that is entirely on them.

> Outside of some exchange link keeping a name = address record

"Outside of" is doing a lot of work here.