It's kind of frustrating as a person wanting a decentralised payments system having to work with people who want the most anonymous payments system possible. E

It's kind of frustrating as a person wanting a decentralised payments system having to work with people who want the most anonymous payments system possible. Enabling anonymous financial actions _is the very definition_ of money laundering. Though the protocol could be freely distributed, any form of business built on it will have a lot of trouble existing in any useful form. Starting from that point is going to make your life so much harder. And of course, the irony in trying to use Bitcoin as a basis for anonymous transactions is solved with Zerocoin. But I don't know how a law-abiding business can have reasonable knowledge of the parties in the transactions (a requirement to not be money laundering) without meeting the wishes of the fanbase.