And there we go. The promise of a form of cash outside of USA government control is terrifying to the USA government. And well, most other governments too.

It is pretty obvious that when the USA government goes after crypto exchanges, what matters is to get the exchange shut down. The actual justification for doing so is an afterthought.

I'm torn on the issue of whether dematerialized privacy-preserving cash (and yeah, I know crypto exchanges had very little to do with that) is even a good thing to begin with. To me the strongest argument for it is that the crimes that would be facilitated by that are already trivial, as long as you're rich enough. You don't need Monero when you can "sell" a Monet in exchange for services instead. It is incredibly hypocritical of governments to complain that privacy-preserving currencies enable criminals when they have done literally nothing to stop the numerous convenient ways to launder money that are accessible only to rich and powerful people.