I'm a fan of Monero but I also realized something - government actions as well as altcoin features may actually make Bitcoin stronger, not weaker.
Maybe N.N. Taleb would call this antifragility or Lindy effect - or you may just call it common sense.
Let's go back to late 2017 - the BTC network is clogged with transactions and fees are insane. Litecoin (LTC) seems like a good alternative because block times are 4 times faster, there are fewer transactions and LTC transaction fees are acceptable. There are speculations that Litecoin will become something like silver to Bitcoin's gold (gold-silver as an analogy of BTC-LTC relation) and some traders even speculate that price of Litecoin should converge to 25 %︀ of that of Bitcoin because there is 4 times more LTCs and because of atomic︁ swaps.
Well some time had passed and Litecoin didn't realize these dreams and visions, actually︂ most of development on the code ended and even the founder semi-abandoned the project. In︃ the meanwhile, Bitcoin developers worked and improvements were made - lightning network introduced and adopted,︄ transaction size was optimized, wallets got better with fee estimation, exchanges learned how to better︅ send transactions.
Now we have 2020 and people realize that Bitcoin is not anonymous but︆ pseudonymous at the very best. Again there are some alternatives that seem pretty good -︇ Monero, Zcash; XMR seems like a good alternative because of enforced privacy and ring signatures.︈ Some people speculate that Monero will appreciate just because of this technical feature. I really︉ like Monero and fluffy pony etc. but again it may not happen. Instead Bitcoin developers︊ may again work and come up with improvements - just look at stuff like coinjoin︋ directly implemented into wallets like Wasabi. And that is just one single example that chain︌ analysis companies will have problems with.
All these companies you posted, such as Chainalysis or︍ Ciphertrace, these guys are snake oil salesmen who hope they sell their solution to traditional︎ bankers getting into crypto and to government agencies. While at the same time they know️ they can't do s**t about Monero and soon they won't be able to do s**t even with Bitcoin.
Monero is not important in the big scale of things. I think what is more important are the fiat on-ramps and off-ramps. I.e. do you buy and sell crypto on a fully regulated EU/CRS/FATCA/GATCA exchange that knows your name, details, address, income, source of funds and your mother-in-law's bra size?
Or do you buy and sell crypto on a P2P basis, maybe from some guy in cash, or getting paid in crypto? That way you keep your privacy and you are using Bitcoin as it was intended︀ to be used and as it was described in the Nakamoto's whitepaper.
