I think you're missing his point. He was really being tongue in cheek as if to say, other fads in the past have much easier to copy, but when it comes to anonymity it is actually the most advanced technology yet.
The reason Bitcoin itself even exists is because of revolutionary methods of applying cryptography to computer networks. This is research level science that is being conducted. Lofty claims of advances in this field are ridiculous and can't be taken seriously at all without white papers, technical presentation, and professionalism.
White papers, presentations etc are more for academics. If you have something working, well, then your code is your white paper, so to speak. Others can analyze it and write 10 papers each, but the magic is performed in the result itself. If you have to convince others through papers and presentations, it's game over.
Academia is good for theoretical stuff like Zerocoin but when it comes to actually making something they haven't produced anything - so it's up to the people, like Cryptonote/Bytecoin people, Gmaxwell, Evan, etc to do the planning and coding.
The people can't wait the "academics", funded by the government, to provide solutions for them. They'll find a way to do things, even "dirty" ways and hacks that improve their privacy/anonymity.
But you have to admit XC wouldn't have taken off like this if Dark didn't have serious problems of its own. I have no problem admitting Dark is way ahead of the game and may be "the best" or most ahead anonymous coin at the moment and I'd much rather hold it if I could afford it, but people try to cover up the fact it has problems too, the whole instamine controversy, masternodes being hosted on Amazon servers, being ripe pickings for DDOS, etc. there wouldn't be a "search" for a better coin if there wasn't a need.
People simply want to catch the 2nd train because they missed the first one.
Litecoin vs Bitcoin,
memes/animals vs DOGE,
countrycoins vs Aurora,
"whitecoins" vs Blackcoin,
"anonymous" coins vs Dark
...etc
It's always the same.
As for masternodes being hosted on Amazon, one can host them in their PC and home internet connection. Nobody is forcing anyone to use external servers. It's just common sense for DDOS protection.
At the very least I don't think Dark deserves to be anywhere near the 10 dollar and above mark until we have proven 95-99% anonymity at least and full disclosure of source code to insure the technology is safe.
Dark is a development platform. It develops new code, new ideas, new economic models - and you can see the benefits in XC, which in a way are a vote of confidence for DRK's model. XC wouldn't even exist without DRK. Dan himself said it. He saw DRK and wanted to make something better.
The price (10$+) means nothing without the coin count and unlike most people who cannot make simple co-relations between price, scarcity, inflation etc - investors understand these parameters. Coin numbers adjusted, Litecoin would cost something like 65-70$ if it had 4.3mn coins instead of 29mn. And the question is why? What does Litecoin offer to cost 65-70$?
Under this light, why is Darkcoin overpriced? Even if it had 0 anonymity it would still be able to be closer to LTC for the mere reason that its economic model is better. LTC makes 28800 coins per day and DRK only 2880... LTC requires ~100mn USD to absorb annual production and DRK ~10mn usd. The fundamentals are heavily in favor of DRK.
There is still no guarantee after all that either DRK or XC isn't some major honeypot
Drk being a honeypot for what? No reason for FUD really. You can run a wireshark and see if there is anything suspicious. Besides, nobody forces a DRK user to use the closed source DarkSend wallet. They can use the opensource one. If they are in the receiving end of the payment (like a merchant etc) they don't care anyway. It's the sender who DarkSends.