For those of us that have amassed tens of thousands of them since the beginning of D2 they are basically an easy way to replenish glimmer at Rahool which translates to many other things.
I'm glad they're disposing of essentially useless currencies, but making everything cost glimmer, not increasing the glimmer cap, AND taking away easy sources of glimmer is only going to make glimmer the most annoying currency to get.
Personally, I'm CONSTANTLY running out of glimmer from focusing the shit ton of engrams that drop from activities and buying transmog bounties.
I have a clanmate who doesn't play regularly and he told us right after this article dropped that Legendary Shards aren't even what he struggles with. It's Cores, Prisms, Ascendant Shards, and Alloys so to him this does nothing in "leveling the playing field".
To me this just looks like Bungie saying "grind more".