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.
Bitcoin is secure. The only thing is that the user need to have good security practices. As long as you don't say "I own 1ranochigo" publicly, no one can tie the address to you and is hence pseudonymous.
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!
The fee would still be lower than the fee you would need to pay your bank or payment processor. That is without factoring in the risk of your bank/payment gateway closing your account.
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.
a) Pay a higher fee if the goods is reversible. b) Have some kind of rebate or lower TX fees.
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.
Bitcoin itself is decentralised, have low fees and has instantaneous transaction speed. Being pseudonymous is enough to prevent most people from spying on your spending habits.
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.
Bitcoin transactions, when having at least one confirmation is very hard to reverse. Payment processors like PayPal allows chargeback for over 180 days. This is unsafe for people dealing with virtual goods(game credits, starbucks card etc.)