Can someone explain why even bother with partial privacy, especially considering that with such a tiny amount of participants its practically meaningless. There are already full privacy cryptos. Did DASH do privacy trying to be everything for everyone or is there a deeper reason?
Fungibility is a core component of any cryptocurrency. Mixing helps keep the coin fungible, refer to Toknormal's post on the matter.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg56005372#msg56005372