Yes. All the government agencies are aware of this obsolete tech that requires trusted third parties to work.

While Chaum’s vision did fail during its time, now - that ecash can be deployed on top of Bitcoin - it offers new unique use cases not possible with other tech. Instantly confirmed micropayments due to ecash’s bearer instrument qualities is just one example. Of course there are downsides, but it’s important to remember that there are no fool proof solutions in life, only trade offs.

Custodial solutions on top of bitcoin remain custodial and vulnerable.

They do, but there are use cases where you can sacrifice censorship resistance to achieve some immediate goal. One of the latest cool things I saw was the ability to use ecash tokens as API keys. So, say someone provides API endpoints you value and runs their own mint. In this case it doesn’t really matter if the financial side is centralized cause the same party provides the service and ensures financial interactions. There are many more examples where ecash can be beneficial. Again, I’m not saying it is a panacea, but rather a tool that can improve upon many current solutions.

>instantly confirmed by what? a pinky promise?? you're using the same verbiage found in blockchain architecture but you really shouldn't. a "confirmation" inside an ecash mint is just an empty promise.