I think this is a mistake but it's not my career and money on the line. If anonymity is provided, I think this would clearly differentiate Vtc versus Btc, Ltc and Doge. As the overall adoption of crypto itself is less than 0.02% of population, I don't think one can conclusively say that Vtc adoption will not increase significantly if anonymity is provided.
I think many people either refuse or otherwise fail to admit to themselves that the health of digital currency as a whole is dictated by and will be dictated by (in the long run) by bitcoin. The adoption level is so far in that I've seen bitcoin references in some of the monday night tv shows that come on (like the show "Almost Human") and before any altcoin will ever be successful (and they are ALT coins) we will need to see the overall acceptance and MASS adoption of bitcoin. If the health of digital currency as a whole is actually depicted by the health of Bitcoin, we can then make the obvious conclusion that whatever is considered a downside to bitcoin (when it comes to society accepting bitcoin on a massive scale) will also be considered a downside to any other altcoin that tries to take the scene after bitcoin.
Right now the biggest downside to bitcoins mass adoption is the anonymity, yes the philosophy behind bitcoin is almost anarchistic...but things will have to change a little before bitcoin becomes truly massively adopted. Authorities are already prepared to make some serious regulations and enforcements if bitcoin turns out to be something too easily used by criminals, look at the hearing in New York, the goal organizations like the Bitcoin foundation are to help show that bitcoin is not necessarily something meant for criminals....In other words if an altcoin were to show itself to be BETTER at being used by criminals (like by implementing in it's code some form of function that made it's use even MORE anonymous than bitcoin) there would be some huge issues with adoption. Regardless of how many people want to be anonymous, do you think the world will accept Vertcoin if for example every government in the world came out and announced something like "Don't trust vertcoin, it is truly a currency for criminals, anyone we see dealing vertcoin will be seen as suspicious for criminal activity".
This is what the devs at vertcoin mean by saying governments will not stand by while we sit here and produce a coin ideal for criminal use. The goal here is to create a coin that is a competitor to Bitcoin, not the anti bitcoin...The moment Vertcoin becomes looked at as something bad or something that attracts "bad people", the coin will fail...
Bitcoin started out as the drug coin. It still IS the drug coin. And it's doing fine by the public. There are too many coins competing with bitcoin's niche - if vertcoin doesn't innovate it will die just like the hundreds of other altcoins.
Anonymity is DESIRED.
And just like someone else said above me - tumbling services will be provided for any mainstream coin anyway. Why not have that service on your own blockchain?