Using money is a public act. That's the thing. You're talking about a system in which you go out into public and ask everyone around you to preserve your privacy. It is not something that is possible because there are counter parties who also know you are trying to transact with them. Privacy is selectively revealing yourself to trusted parties. And the problem with that is merchants are never trusted parties. That is the whole rationale behind having trustless money. Treat privacy like you treat anything else. When you're walking down the street, you carry a weapon because the average thug can be repelled with a weapon. But if you think your privacy precautions are going to save you from a nation state, you are sorely mistaken. Obscurity and pseudonymous techniques are the equivalent of carrying a weapon with you. As for your premise, that digital surveillance is the norm. It isn't the norm of humanity, it is the norm of a centralized monetary system. And again, it's not that Bitcoin is not private or at least obscured. The emergence of Bitcoin is trying to reconcile a centralized system against a decentralized one. The only reason anybody can tie an identity to a Bitcoin address is because of the fiat on-ramps and off-ramps using Bitcoin. If I mine Bitcoin or do a job for someone and receive the payment in Bitcoin, there's nothing tying my identity to that address. That is just a holdover of people trying to transfer their wealth from the controlled system to the decentralized one.