At least right now, the problem is that the payments themselves might undermine what the system is set up to do, because the payments might be traceable. There

At least right now, the problem is that the payments themselves might undermine what the system is set up to do, because the payments might be traceable. There are proposals for truly anonymous and decentralized digital currencies (ZeroCoin comes to mind). However, they are not exactly practical because their overhead is quite high.