I see the misunderstanding: I used "laundering" to describe a method of obscuring a trail of exchanges, not a crime.
I can exchange gold, or textiles or something, and not expect surveillance of those transactions. I do live in a country that requires some reporting of those for tax purposes, but not tracking of the assets the way crypto does.
The moment I pick up a monetized piece of paper that the government printed with a serial number and all that, which is guaranteed by the full faith of the government, and is standardized by the government in a global financial system, I accept some side effects, such as the government's expectation of tracking and standardization.
Similarly, the moment I pick up a crypto currency, I accept all the technical limitations / requirements of complete ledger accessibility, and methods of circumventing that are no more sophisticated than laundering.
In effect, with gov-backed money and crypto, you are forced into a system of surveillance. I don't see the privacy angle one bit.