If you take a look at the history, you'll actually see that the governments have kind of become more powerful. For an example, the entire idea of a personal income tax is a recent invention. There used to be taxes and a 10% tax meant revolution. At the height of their military campaigns taxed people at a rate of 3% according to several sources. 90% of the income earned being taxed is practically insane. You can read my post A Brief History of Taxes, Fiat money and The Chinese Proto-Socialist Emperor Who Ruined his Country for more on that.

Taxation is just one aspect. Surveillance has become cheaper and more widespread. The regulations are massive and the militarizes are burning so much money media has turned into propaganda machines and social media has turned into its own version of massively scaled hatred and degeneration. Governments have enormous power and we live in a mostly Democratic world meaning we are ruled by mobs and not principles. If we ere ruled by tyrants, that would have been a relatively easier fix. But mobs mean billions of idiots who's need for stuff is their prime directive.

The Bleakness Faced By Crypto-Sphere

Bitcoin is dead. I actually wrote my own fact based conspiracy theory about it.

SEC Filing Requirements for Insider Trades
Trading of all stock is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Officers and directors of companies, owners of restricted stock, and owners of more than 10% of a company's stock are legally required to let the SEC, and thereby the public, know when they sell, or intend to sell their stock. Today's Brief outlines the forms that are used for this purpose.

Form Definitions
"Insider" is a general term for officers and directors of a company. However, most "insider" rules also apply to shareholders who have more than 10% of the company's stock.
https://www.briefing.com/investor/learning-center/general-concepts/sec-filing-requirements-for-insider-trades

10% of the crypto marketcap is just 20 Billion USD which can easily be funded by just few hedge funds working together without much trouble. It's practically nothing for a big government. When people become skeptical of some Crypto-Utopian future, they do have their points. We also have to consider that the average people would value ease of use and security and will find refuge in centralized entities and there will be so much regulation, KYC/AML and the world of crypto will become much like the internet in the future.

They are actually kind of right.

But

Most people don't see the little improvements happen in the shadows. Edward Snowden had to use PGP Messaging to contact Journalists. You can read a little bit about PGP here: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-send-encrypted-messages-using-pgp-like-edward-snowden-2015-6 When the question of Telegram Vs PGP given to experts, they still pick PGP over Telegram. But that's also the only thing they rank over Telegram AFAIK. Now my quesion is how easy it is to use Telegram? Can your Grandma use it? Yes. She's still likely to go with a more default and known option (maybe like FB/WhatsApp) but the Telegram option isn't that far.

This is true for many crypto projects. Take dICOs for an example:

Decentralized Investing via The Transparent Crowdsale aka dICO

So why is this method so special? So much “better” or “more decentralized” than, say, Ethereum SmartContract ICOs?
Probably the most important feature of the dICO is that there is truly no authority or centralized control point for participating. Unlike Ethereum for example, where a project creates a smart contract(s) to centrally manage the ICO, a decentralized ICO is simply making the new token available for AtomicSwap, which is an over the counter trade, from a common token like KMD for the equiv fixed exchange rate of the new token for the project.This is done on a decentralized exchange, tokens are made available at the ICO price and from the projects wallet, and participants are buying them direct at that fixed price until they are all sold.

While Utrum first launched the dICO on BarterDex, within days we had a more “grandma friendly” dapp developed with the help of Komodo devs and our own in-house Blockchain and Opps Dev. This user friendly dapp did exactly what BarterDex does…without all the extra bells and whistles. Just a simple wallet interface from which a user could buy the desired amount of OOT at the fixed/real-time exchange rate on BarterDex.

When Utrum Foundation launched the dICO on BarterDEX we were listed on CoinMarketCap within 24 hours. That’s a record. The reason this occurred is the Utrum Crowdsale was taking place via a dICO on BarterDEX, an exchange which CoinMarketCap monitors the volume and activity of. The trading data was picked up by CMC and OOT was listed in record time.

You can read more about Utrum here: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@vimukthi/utrum-a-dream-project-for-crypto-lovers-on-komodo-platform-for-all-your-research-and-education-purposes-and-a-truly The only barrier anybody had to participate in the ICO was already having to own some amount of cryptocurrancy. Most crypto-fiat trading doesn't happen P2P. There is a lot of regulation involved. But if you trade and invest properly, you can can make your little treasure chest grow.

The privacy tech is there and they can free us from the big brother's eyes to a considerable extent. The only real barrier we have is from going fiat to crypto. Projects like Enigma and Komodo are taking privacy and smart contracts to a whole new level and 20% of the PIVX supply has already been turned into zPIV and the mobile privacy Tx are under development and soon to be released for the public.

A Little Bit Into The Future

Do the above product look Grandma friendly? The Beta version of the above platform is coming Q1 2019 and tthis is what I call a death by thousand cuts. Bitshares is closing on 1% of the trading volume of Binance. The best part is that the Binance trade volume has gone down from its peak and I remember Bitshares trading volume being much smaller. So we have a growth in Decentralized Exchanges.

Few Things You Can Do To Help Suffocate Governments

• Mine crypto on your devices. Personally I use a mining alternative to earn Byteball.

• Try to buy crypto P2P if you can and use projects like STEEM or Treasury Proposals to get paid in crypto. Buy some PoS coins and stake them for rewards.

• Use a DEX when possible. Spread good news when you hear it and help people understand technology better.

• Participate in worthwhile airdrops. For an example get some free money linking your STEEM account with Byteball.

• Don't sell your crypto for fiat. Buy bitUSD or USDT or some pegged asset. SBD has a $1 price floor (not a peg) and if SBD is at $1 and if you feel a bear market near, buy SBD.

• There are so many crypto projects popping up. Use them and avoid government red tape when possible.

These are just a few things and they can truly help. You may not think highly of thse little things. But look at Venezuela.

Do you think their government likes what's happening? No. But they can't stop it. Governments couldn't stop piracy via torrents (which is wrong 99.99% of the time) and peopl were gaining pretty much nothing through P2P sharing. When crypto is too bug, they can't just jail everyone and the trick is to make things big before anybody can react. Luckily this happened in Venezuela and http://www.discoverdash.com can illustrate the effects of rapid merchant adoption.

I Repeat: The Only Real Barrier Is Fiat-Crypto Gateways

After you get your first crypto, There is the Komodo DEX for anonymity lovers. You can switch for Bitshares for more high performance high volume trading. Particl and many other projects are aiming to be decentralized versions of Amazon. Dash and PIVX are great way to have some cheap privacy. STEEM is great to earn crypto. No governemnt is tougher than a good DAO. The tech is already here and even the UI/UX is decent. The only real thing that is lacking is the adoption and fiat Gateways.