Saying that these coins are used only for illegal activities is putting all cats in the same bag, a gross overgeneralization, since there was an study from a recognized UK based cybersecurity firm (specialized in creating tools to identify criminality associated with blockchain related transactions) that determined that less than 1% of the transactions to exchanges were illegal in nature.
These news is just the establishment panicking about losing control over their slave population
and trying to impose on us a Police State. Anyone with a thinking mind, should be willing to support and expand as much as possible the use of these and other cryptocoins. Let's make the State fall under their own weight.

http://bitcoinist.com/study-identifies-less-than-1-of-bitcoin-transactions-to-exchanges-are-illicit/