When financial repression fails, dictators turn to the second tactic – arrests, often followed by torture. One might think that using bitcoin makes it difficult to find those responsible through the protests – at least through their financial transactions. But this isn’t the case. Bitcoin transactions are recorded on the ledger, and the ledger is public. Anyone can download it, view it, and analyze it. And while the ledger doesn’t contain people’s identities or locations, it is subject to analysis and often yields identifying information. This, of course, can be disastrous for anti-authoritarian pro-democracy protesters and activists. The greater the resources of the dictatorship, the greater the risk of using bitcoin. It’s better than banks, to be sure, but it’s a risk nonetheless.
When one looks at coinjoins and payjoins, one sees all the hoops one has to go through to gain base layer privacy on Bitcoin... And coinjoining isn't free, so you run the risk of people who run coinjoins as a method of rent-seeking. One that would be denied them if Bitcoin had chosen to adopt a more privacy preserving architecture.
But NGU must not be denied. Monero has been banned by exchanges! What if that had happened to our precious Bitcoin?? Our Lord and Saviour Michael Saylor would have the vapours if Bitcoin devs pushed privacy to the base layer and got his pet rock banned by exchanges and governments...