Financial privacy on public ledgers is not a fringe demand. A company that settles supplier invoices on-chain is publishing its cost base to competitors. That is a legitimate problem, and it is why privacy tooling keeps being built despite the enforcement climate.
Selective disclosure is the compromise on offer
View keys let a user reveal their own history to an auditor or regulator without making it public. Exclusion proofs let a user demonstrate their funds do not originate from a sanctioned set, without revealing the full graph. Both are cryptographically sound and neither has been formally blessed by a major supervisor.
The unresolved question
Whether a compliance regime designed around intermediaries can accept proofs generated by users. That is a legal and institutional question, not a technical one, and it will be settled by rulemaking and litigation rather than by better circuits.
Developers publishing threat models and legal analysis alongside their code are doing more for the field's prospects than those who publish neither.
A legitimate need, poorly defended
Financial privacy is standard in every other payment system. On public ledgers it requires deliberate tooling, which regulators read as evasion by design.
Selective disclosure schemes, where users can prove compliance without publishing their whole history, are the most promising route out of the stalemate.
