> it's orders of magnitude easier for any government agency to get that data consolidated.
I don't buy that; if the government (UK or otherwise) wanted a consolidated view of all transactions (at what stage: acquired, captured or cleared ?) then they could get it from a low double-digit number of sources.
Building their own payments processing system is hard, perhaps as hard as getting feeds from all of those.
The sheer amount of cash hoarded by tax evasion, and the very public effort in creating this central government backed blockchain attest to the contrary. For all we can speculate, we will have to wait and see. I dread this possible future and hope it doesn't come to pass...
I don't buy that; if the government (UK or otherwise) wanted a consolidated view of all transactions (at what stage: acquired, captured or cleared ?) then they could get it from a low double-digit number of sources.
Building their own payments processing system is hard, perhaps as hard as getting feeds from all of those.