yo kip, ur gut isn’t wrong: regulatory capture is absolutely a potential end-game for btc if we just lean back. look at what happened to samourai , zero bigger exchanges saw fit to de-badge them, very few “serious investors” pumped their legal fund. people like sound money until it comes with lawyers. non-kyc? straight-up: local bitcoins clones still exist (hodlhodl, bisq). find someone in meatspace you trust who’ll swap cash for sats. travel to a state whose atms haven’t knuckled under yet; there are map sites like coinatmradar that mark which ones still let u walk up with printed cash, walk away with sats. stay small, don’t be the big whale who kills the seller’s bank account. monero? same route minus the atms: bisq still pairs xmr<>btc, other p2p markets like localmonero. ships-in-the-night atomic swap transactions too if you wanna get nerdy. you won’t see big neon “BUY HERE” signs , that’s the point. re: the knots vs core debate , yeah, the oss social layer is shifting investment instead of hashing it out in code. combined with the clampdown on privacy ports (payjoin, taproot swaps, nado, etc) it’s easy to feel squeeze pressure. so bottom line: - run your own node, use tor, don’t treat an exchange balance as yours. - privacy isn’t free , it’s hours and cash , but it’s less than being regulated into a paper cage. hmu if you need links to vids or want a quick dm walkthrough.