steve on Nostr: Ignoring ordinals and the fact that some sats are apparently more equal than others, ...

Ignoring ordinals and the fact that some sats are apparently more equal than others, there is a huge difference between serialization and a totally open ledger of transaction history. Banks can see entry and exit points, but Chainalysis can watch the actual flow from wallet to wallet and track the exact trajectory of each coin easily. This is a huge amount of data, which means you’re not only forever associated with everyone you ever transact with, you’re associated with everyone they transact with too, and that data never goes away. Even if you don’t care about Chainalysis being able to monitor you, if you have a savings account then sending someone Bitcoin from it means revealing to them exactly how much BTC you own, and lets them watch all of your on chain activity forever after.

This is not cash. Even accounting for serialization, I never have to spend a second thinking about the consequences to my financial privacy when I hand somebody $5. I will never know if my $5 bill has been used for drugs or strippers or crime, and I can rest assured that if I choose to use it for those things, or donate it to my church, nobody will ever be able to track it back to me 10 years from now.