Comment by contingencies

Sure, there are better systems in privacy terms. However, the bigger story is that the world is changing fast: a huge percentage of the world's population - in China - now lives a reality of instant mobile payment. If you accept that the general population will always gravitate toward functional, reliable, cheap, centralized payment systems unless they have specific needs such as anonymity/illegality, and that those systems are improving rapidly in features and distribution, then the real challenge to future decentralized currency is getting anyone to give a damn.