Step by step, bank overseers have widened their enforcement territory to include digital assets. In one sense, crypto was their dream financial system, with the path of most transactions auditable on a public ledger, albeit with the identities of senders and receivers hidden behind alphanumeric addresses that looked like they’d been typed by a cat crawling on a keyboard. If the users bought or cashed out their crypto at regulated exchanges, governments could subpoena those companies for their real-world identities.
