The people in power don't necessarily (and usually don't) have much technical knowledge around the area they're trying to regulate. They just know they want to crack down on [money laundering | terrorism |sexual predators |mass shooters | other target of the week] and being able to snoop on encrypted transaction info or other data is the magic solution. And it is, if you want to become a surveillance state. Some of our politicians in power want that as well.
Congress has both lobbyists and government agencies pushing for various legislation to open up encryption loopholes or otherwise increase surveillance on users. Most of the time the more outrageous requests get shot down in committees (or never considered in the first place), but every now and then we'll get some bullshit in the form of a privacy bill or anti-crime bill or whatever that manages to escape into a chamber for a vote. Then it's up to us citizens to bug our congressmen into understanding why it's a bad idea to let it through.
I don’t know enough about the technical aspects to comment, so I won’t. Just want to say that the people in power rarely think that far ahead. They’re trying to address a specific problem, but they don’t have the technical acumen to intelligently rate information offered them by interested third parties (read: industry lobbies, think tanks, recognized experts, NGOs, non-profits, special interest groups, PACs, etc).