I agree with the article in that non-card based payments methods (Square) are the future, but we've seen again and again that moving towards the future takes steps (look at tablets - we had so many iterations on tablet computing before we got to the iPad, and who knows if that's even the end all be all).

My point is that Coin is a much smaller stride for the typical consumer; only SV geeks (guilty) are as excited about NFC payments as HN is, and the typical person sees this aggregation of cards as 'technology' that they're much more familiar with. No surprise that it's blowing up.

Just my two cents.