There's no other decentralized e-currency. This means bitcoin is the only electronic payments and storage system where your funds are not subject to seizure by a central authority. You won't wake up one day and find your account frozen (cf paypal, bitcoins are safe in the blockchain as long as you have your wallet) or be totally helpless if the domain name of some fly-by-night startup goes down (cf e-gold, bitcoins are safe as long as there are nodes in the network).

As for the economic critiques, of course bitcoins are no panacea. These critiques are relevant to any market; the punchline of the article was even "I'd say the same about the Euro"