Most of your points are valid, and I also found the article to be rather weak. With that said... The serpentine bank transfer system that skims transaction fee

Most of your points are valid, and I also found the article to be rather weak. With that said... The serpentine bank transfer system that skims transaction fees on a huge number of transactions can be avoided. ... and is replaced by a different transfer system that skims transaction fees. Actually, this is the main reason for why I believe Bitcoin will not "conquer the world": It has the potential to put downwards pressure on transaction fees, but it is inherently inefficient (the "carbon footprint" mentioned in the article), which means that it can be undercut by a competing system. Government does not have to issue it. The jury is still out on whether this is a net positive or not. This really depends on your reading of history. It seems Bitcoin is well on the way to reinvent the gold-backed free-banking system of ca. the 18th and 19th century. It's true that there are people who believe such a system to be superior to what we have today, in the same way that it's true that there are people who believe humans play no role in global warming (that is, the vast majority of scientists studying the issue are on one side of it, but there's a loud, politically motivated minority of the population who disagrees).