> Another solution that has no harms and only benefit is to require the reporting of every ransom payment. That would give the government the crypto transaction information to conduct taint and attribution analysis. It is currently illegal to knowingly use funds received from kidnapping or ransoms, and this reporting requirement would help the government enforce that.

Definitely a must have for now and on a international scale IMHO.

But a effective ban on ransom payments would still be the most effective measurement.

The problem is how do you effectively ban it?

For many countries such thing could never be enforced, so it wouldn't remove the sensitive for non-specific target ransomware attacks IMHO and as such won't work.