Worth noting there are several projects working on making crytocurrencies much more private. Matthew Green's zerocoin and zerocash are the strongest, providing provable anonymity.

In principle, zerocoin could be added to bitcoin, but the bitcoin devs aren't up for it yet. Zerocash is so different it pretty much has to be an altchain.

Great idea: "Oh, yes, I totally agree with the need for Bitcoin regulation. In fact, every transaction should be required to be made available to the public ..."