This would be a very dangerous precedent for the cause of privacy. It's the financial equivalent of banning encrypted communication.
It doesn't necessarily mean prohibiting anonymous instruments like physical cash or Monero, but it means that any non-small use of such instruments is required to be accompanied with documents about the transaction.
E.g. you can legally sell stuff for a briefcase of cash, but you're required to declare the transaction, including the identity of that person (e.g., in USA, IRS form 8300 for cash amounts exceeding $10000; you can legally sell stuff online for Monero or whatever other consideration, but if it's a significant amount, then you are required to identify the person even if the payment instrument is anonymous.
The parent comment gave a prediction of Monero being banned by exchanges. That is the electronic equivalent of banning cash deposits.
>E.g. you can legally sell stuff for a briefcase of cash, but you're required to declare the transaction, including the identity of that person (e.g., in USA, IRS form 8300 for cash amounts exceeding $10000; you can legally sell stuff online for Monero or whatever other consideration, but if it's a significant amount, then you are required to identify the person even if the payment instrument is anonymous.
While unrelated to the topic I was referring to, this is indeed a slippery slope. The minimum amount for reporting to FinCEN started at $10,000 decades ago, and hasn't changed despite inflation reducing the real value of that sum by several fold.
In some countries the minimum amount has even been reduced in nominal terms, despite it already gradually declining in real terms due to inflation. Amidst this gradual criminalisation of ever less substantial anonymous cash transactions, there are a growing number of calls for banning cash altogether. That is a textbook example of a slippery slope.
And isn't this an admission that Monero is of no real legal use? Otherwise, why would you care about cashing it out at an exchange? You could spend it on goods and services instead.
>And isn't this an admission that Monero is of no real legal use?
What kind of absurd conclusion is that? There are infinite number of possible non-criminal reasons why one would want to convert one currency to another. In fact, the currency having the property of not leaking private information has no bearing on that.
>Otherwise, why would you care about cashing it out at an exchange? You could spend it on goods and services instead.
This is absolute nonsense. Why do we have USD-YEN exchanges?