Money speaks a lot louder than PHD's who haven't made a competitive currency. Bitcoin is booming - nothing else is even on the radar. Bitcoin doesn't have to play ball with anyone if they are, by magnitudes, the largest digital currency in use.

So far, it works. If BTC stops working, you can expect everyone to jump ship and hopefully a more secure alternative will be developed with lessons learned from the BTC ride. But for now, unless you can produce an attack that can lose people money in the bitcoin ecosystem, ranting about theoretical cryptosecurity in digital currencies and how BTC only being as secure as the majority of the swarm allows doesn't make anyone hesitant to invest in bitcoin.

> I have no real problem with having a "bank" that issues currency

The problem with banks is that they can always act in their own self-interest to fuck over the holders of their currency, and by having the only right to "counterfeit" their currency they have abnormal economic power in the economy their currency drives. It is the reason the US Federal Reserve is so corrupt right now, can wildly print US dollars to their own discretion, which is effectively stealing from anyone holding dollars by devaluing the currency as a whole, and they can do it at their own whims.