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Knowing about every little thing people buy is as creepy as knowing about every little thing people say. And it's not necessary in the least. There are valid ways to measure cash flows without tracking every individual dollar. In the end cryptocurrencies play a similar role as gold and diamonds; not a great investment but useful as a store of value.

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Perhaps. But considering people are already publishing their payments and thoughts on the internet in a constant stream of mediocre mental vomit, I doubt that besides advertisement agencies anything really changes if it was done at a different level.

The information availability might change mostly in areas where people are actively trying to hide (regardless if that's for good or bad reasons), but considering the size of that niche (ironically, perhaps also just a 1% of the masses) I doubt the significance of such a change.

That's not what he's saying. This isn't for monitoring individual behavior but rather macro trends. We could, for example, provide precise real-time data on metrics like inflation so we could craft better policy faster.

Payment providers are already selling this information for marketing purposes. I'm sure policy makers and central banks could already get much more detailed insights if they want to.

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