The question is will the Bitcoin Foundation put those add-ons into the Bitcoin protocol? I think they would be quite reluctant to do it at this point, as they are more concerned with establishing Bitcoin as a viable currency right now, that's not used just by Silk Road and its ilk.
I do think in the mid to long term Zerocoin or something similar should be added to Bitcoin to at least allow people the option to be anonymous if they want to be.
However, I'm also unsure if this should be done right now as governments are trying to decide what to do with Bitcoin. Perhaps it would be better to wait a couple more years, get Bitcoin more established into the mainstream, and adopted by banks and more companies, and then enable something like Zerocoin in the protocol, when it would be too late to stop Bitcoin. Although I'm not sure what the government's reaction towards Zerocoin would be then.
On the other hand, Bitcoin may be even harder to kill than file-sharing/torrenting, in which case maybe it won't matter if it's done now, as the government's action against it could be irrelevant.
I do think in the mid to long term Zerocoin or something similar should be added to Bitcoin to at least allow people the option to be anonymous if they want to be.
However, I'm also unsure if this should be done right now as governments are trying to decide what to do with Bitcoin. Perhaps it would be better to wait a couple more years, get Bitcoin more established into the mainstream, and adopted by banks and more companies, and then enable something like Zerocoin in the protocol, when it would be too late to stop Bitcoin. Although I'm not sure what the government's reaction towards Zerocoin would be then.
On the other hand, Bitcoin may be even harder to kill than file-sharing/torrenting, in which case maybe it won't matter if it's done now, as the government's action against it could be irrelevant.