Here's a few reasons why it isn't:
• Monero is screwed up from conception in that it trashes the very thing that makes bitcoin valuable - blockchain transparency
That's a funny statement. Nobody wants financial *transparency* (otherwise, show me where you've put up in public all your bank accounts....). The transparency in bitcoin was simply ONE way to verify that spending a coin was legit, that is, that there was no double spend, and that its origin was "a real coin according to the agreed-upon rules of creating coins".
As long as these two aspects are guaranteed, no double spend, and no counterfeiting, the monetary token is valid. It is because Satoshi didn't have a better idea, that he set up a system where you can follow every coin from creation, through every transaction, to your wallet: it is ONE way to prove the two fundamental properties: legit and no double spend, by showing this succession of transmissions in the open.
There have been invented, afterwards, more sophisticated ways to prove the same. Cryptonote is one, zerocash is another. They guarantee you cryptographically that a certain wallet content derives from correctly created coins, and have never been double-spend. That's good enough. This is cryptography at its best.
Compare it to the following situation:
A document, containing a public key, has a signature that can be verified with said public key. This document is public and well-known for years, but nobody knows who is the author.
One day, I reveal myself as the author. How do I prove this ?
The bitcoin way would be: I show my private key on a TV show, and I show you that with that private key, I can reproduce the signature. So I have shown people that I was indeed, the one who had signed that document. Problem is, now my private key is out, and all *other* documents I also signed that way, can be claimed by everybody.
The monero way would be: send me just any message of your likings, and I will produce a signature to it, that can only be provided with my private key. I send you back the signature ; you can verify it with the public key in the document.
In BOTH CASES I have proved that I possess the private key. In one method, I simply SHOWED you. In another method, I produced a PROOF that I have it without revealing it.
Bitcoin vs. monero is similar: in bitcoin, the origin and non-double spending of a coin is shown in the open, hence proving non-double spending and correct origin. In monero, one PROVES you that the coin was correctly created, and that there EXIST transactions that bring it to my wallet without any double spend, but you simply not see them ; but they are proved. In the same way that you could not see my private key, but I proved to you that I have it.
Transparency on the block chain was a means, not a goal.
