I do not like face to face trading because it is dangerous. In the country I am, I have to avoid it.
I keep reading about bank accounts in the UK, US and EU being frozen due to crypto associations. This is concerning me, and I am reluctant now to use any exchanges to purchase Bitcoin. However, I am happy to purchase crypto via P2P transactions. These can be either cash payments in a face-to-face meeting, or by bank transfer to a trusted person's personal account. Will this be the future of Bitcoin for us mere mortals, or will sanity prevail and allow us to return to using exchanges?
This is how crypto was before. But people just like what is centralized because of their ignorance. Some people will argue with you that the centralized exchanges are regulated, unlike the opposite ones. They will not care about privacy. Most people of this world have ignorant thinking until they fall into a problem. Some people will even be ignorant because of lack of information about how it should be.
Now, what about crypto-to-crypto exchanges? Will government oversight and intervention restrict those. This could lead to decentralised swop services, and surely this is contrary to the wishes of the banking puppet masters?
There are some decentralized exchanges and swap services already and people are using it with tor.