Cryptonote has existed for a long time, and even though it provides good privacy, I don't believe that anyone believes cryptonote is the future of cryptocurrency. It is a good intermediate solution to use until something better like zerocoin comes along.

Concerning Zerocoin, we have repeatedly stated since the gnosis debacle that zerocoin is not our first objective. There will be no zerocoin development until after we get the next release out. Please look at the development schedule here: https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Development_schedule As you see, after the the next release, we plan to first implement multi-POW and probably merged mining. It is my opinion that this will be fairly easy to do compared to what we are working on now. I don't know how long it will take to implement zerocoin, but something like 6 months time would probably be required. Add this to the time it will take us to get the next two releases out and do the math. If you are waiting for zerocoin this year, you have no one to blame but yourself.

And what do you mean by "first-mover advantage"? Are you some kind of investor/speculator? If so, the development team does not care about you. We have stated that repeatedly. All that we care about is the technology and the fact that is ANC is being used.

Finally, I hate to disparage other coins, but you probably should not be putting boolbery in the same sentence as monero. Do some research: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.0