The unstated pretext is that dark money will be useful. I expect the US Gov would simply make bitcoin illegal if robust anonymity were built on top of it.

It is already (somewhat) difficult to have untraceable property, which is sort of a prerequisite for the dark economy to be interesting. For example, money laundering exists because people with, roughly speaking, dark money, want to use it to purchase legitimate goods.

My most fun objection to this plan is that the feds could get the NSA to find some exploit in the DarkWallet that makes it remote controlled spyware. This should be a real concern since the author point out repeatedly they hope its used for highly illegal activities (tax fraud and drug purchases being lesser examples), and high value target like IS have declared their interest in it.

Now, two developers defending their software against the NSA: possible if they are good enough. But two developers defending a large number of decentralized, very paranoid, and pretty shady users against the NSA? Ehhh

Gold?

Untraceable money is an oxymoron, the whole point of money is that the whole network of people using it, can trust it is not forged out of someones ass, and is instead what its claimed to be.

Imagine a world where every transaction, every penny spent or received by anyone, corporation, state, person, is open and transparent. No way to hide that corruption, that drug money or whatever else corporations and states are up to. No way to just make up money on the spot if you are rich and have a printer. No way to hide inequalities, at the workplace, between classes in a country.