Speaking based solely on my point of view, we use Bitcoin as it has value, and stable value, as opposed to every other coin which fluctuates to all hell.
I am also curious as to what articles make you think Bitcoin isn't all the private or anonymous. And as to why you say we are wasting our time.
It's fine by me if you want to watch your savings depreciate over time and, when you're 60 years old, you find out that your life savings are worth 30% of what they where when you earned them. But I on the other hand am interested in appreciating assets.
I'm not talking about using it instead of altcoins, I'm talking about credit/debit cards, so let's not compare that. Although there are coins with much more stable value, I don't recall which it was though, but it was one of the actually private/anonymous/secure coins.
I don't save articles so I can't link you, but I remember how my route of research went the first day, so maybe that'll help. I was reading about privacy, then went to crypto forums, which lead me to a few articles about government ceasing assets and bitcoins from people, including the guy who ran silkroad. Then I googled around for more ceasings and tracebacks as to who was using bitcoins and found more info. That's probably where you would stop reading. Afterwards, I googled private coins and read tons of articles on comparisons and individual assesments as to how particular coins (mainly bitcoin at first) work.
We're also not talking about savings here either, we're talking about using bitcoins to buy stuff online instead of using credit/debit cards. Please read the post again, I think I made it clear.
Alright, I see the point of view you're coming from here, so I'll try to work with this a little better.
For the silk road case, if I remember it correctly, the reason why the Bitcoins were seized was not because of them being traced, it was because they were being stored on accounts that were accessible by any party when they are in the right location, similar to having a typical wallet on your desktop. You can just get past the user password and you're in.
The thing is that it isn't, from what I know, the tracing of the transaction that gives away the identity of a user; it's other mistakes that pile on top of each other, which allow for government agencies to tie transactions to them via internet traffic or through similar means. This just serves as more evidence, and is typically not where government organizations can determine who an owner of an address is. Once they seize the hardware of a suspect, they can go through and trace transactions, compare them to the blockchain, and then figure out who other people are through interpolating/extrapolating the information of other communications. This would be like I tell Person A "I'll buy weed for $50" and then they see a transaction for $50 going to Address X, they can have high confidence that Person A owns Address X. This might be what you are referring to. The same thing would go for credit cards or any other forms of payment, not just Bitcoin.
I understand that Bitcoin is -technically- worse than other form of payment, when it comes to saving time, however it is better for merchants because it is harder to reverse a transaction, in turn making it more difficult for scammers to succeed. You did cover this in the other statement however, so I'll just leave that.
This is just what I remember/know, and I could be wrong.
Also I find this somewhat entertaining, it's always fun going back an evaluating why I think is something is correct. I apologize if I come off as rude.