The trend seems the other way if anything, that its being more clamped down on.
If you rob a bank and make off with $10m in banknotes the kind of offence would be your lawyer certifying it came from honest sources and letting you buy a mansion with it.
The argument for criminalising it is the lawyer would be assisting in your operation and effectively encouraging you to rob more banks which is not victimless in the way smoking a joint may be.
Yes, the desired outcome by the governments seems to be:
> You rob a bank and make off with $10 MM in bank notes
> They strike those bank notes' serials from a central database and you are now holding a duffel bag of paper.
Fiat currency is just make belief paper. It's backed by nothing but hopes and dreams at this point, so the actual paper you hold is really just a manifestation of that. It has no inherent value beyond what the government says it's worth.
If we move to centralized ledgers it becomes even easier for them to decide which transactions are legitimate and which are not. Of course this then extends to:
> You tried to give $5 to a government critic's podcast
> The transaction was flagged as illegitimate and cancelled. Your $5 was returned to you.
Or rather you can't make off with $10m in bank notes because everything's gone cashless.
By the way fiat is backed by more than hopes and dreams, it's usually backed by quite a few institutions and societal expectations. Unlike many of the altcoins which really are hopes and dreams backed.
If you rob a bank and make off with $10m in banknotes the kind of offence would be your lawyer certifying it came from honest sources and letting you buy a mansion with it.
The argument for criminalising it is the lawyer would be assisting in your operation and effectively encouraging you to rob more banks which is not victimless in the way smoking a joint may be.