I don't get it, now that I investigated and read much more about BitCoins and altcoins.
BitCoins are not secure, not private, not anonymous and to use them - you need extra effort.
Payments made through debit/credit cards are instant and most people keep their money in the bank (in fact, most workplaces choose to pay money only to your bank account now). That said, to use Bitcoin you'd have to buy BitCoins, which creates extra effort. Why do that? I don't get it!
Basically you have a choice: a) just pay instantly using your debit/credit card, or b) pay using BitCoins after wasting some of your time.
I always thought BitCoin was about privacy and anonymity, but clearly it isn't (just read the news...), so that argument goes straight outta window. Other than that, I see zero advantages, and considering what I just said - far as I understand it right now - BitCoin is a completely useless idea, unless we ditch it and start using one of the truly private and anonymous coins, which isn't gonna happen and is irrelevant to this discussion anyway.
So, am I missing something? Am I misunderstanding something? What's up with BitCoins when it comes to buying stuff? The more research I do about it, the less sense it makes to use it.
I'm not posting this to get on someone's nerves, I'm posting it because I want to understand. So don't get all personal and defensive and value-oriented here, I'm looking for facts. Thanks.
I'm talking only about paying using BitCoins. E.g. buying a monitor or a book or headphones using BitCoins instead of a credit/debit card. It's not about being a merchant or selling/buying illegal stuff on .onion sites, nor is it about using altcoins.
Note by which I seek to quench one potential argument: if you buy something and want to get it at some point in your life - you have to enter your name and address.
First I am not using bitcoin as you mean but only as an investment. So I am using it to have more bitcoin, to make other investments which can be made with bitcoin and then I am using it as an investment not using it but holding in my wallet (because I hope that its price will go high in the future).
Then second your meaning in the post is why all this attention for bitcoin because he is not better than other tools of the same family. So have no any kind of superiority regarding the other ways of payment. Maybe is so now that it has began to became regulated and legalized. But was not so when bitcoin was firstly introduced at the market. And it is not so for all that people who use it at the Dark Web. And according to some media this market represents about 80-90% of all the volume of the bitcoin market. So here where comes most of the volume of it.
Third, according to me bitcoin may have today the specifies told by you at your main post but you must not forget that is an invention (first successful materialization) of the disruptive technology peer to peer. This technology will change the future everyday life of the human kind radically. And this product, as such, will have an important place in it. At least this is the prevision. The market seems that give reason to all that. Even after big falls(not for its faults) bitcoin is reestablished day by day more.