Why not? How are they worse than debit cards?
There is no economy to back them, besides the one it is trying to compete with.
It's not competing with an economy, it's competing with a currency and a financial system. Currencies are being inflated, in some cases are very unstable, and have tons of restrictions on them. Financial systems are slow and clunky, with lots of bureacracy and paperwork, with huge fees and likewise tons of restrictions on them. Bitcoin's main flaw right now is low adoption, but the way to fix that is just to increase adoption, which shouldn't be too hard, since it doesn't have those other currency and financial system flaws.
The bottom line is goods will always be priced in bitcoins to be equal to their price in USD, so you aren't really revolutionizing anything except the name of how you are paying for the item. The goods and production of goods themselves will still be done with USD. You are simply convincing yourselves otherwise.
How Americacentric of you. Goods are not just priced in USD. They are also priced in EUR, JPY, GBP, and other currencies. And when they are priced, they are typically priced in the currency that the buyer uses, so if I'm in US, and I'm selling to someone who uses Euros, I give them a price in Euros, not in USD. If they accept BTC, I'll price things in BTC. As more and more people use BTC, there will be less and less of a need to do a conversion to get a sense of what you are paying for.
Also, what do you mean by "anything except the name of how you are paying for the item?" Are you claiming that there is no difference between bitcoins and dollars besides the name???
And I think all of those things you listed are being developed for Bitcoin because it came out first, and it takes some time for most people to figure out the bullshit that is really going on.
Exactly right. In business, that's called "First Mover Advantage," which was quickly followed by "Network Effects," which is where everyone uses something because everyone else uses it. First Mover Advantage benefited bitcoin because it allowed it to set up the biggest customer and developer base first. Now Network Effects are sustaining it because everyone else uses bitcoin. The only business term left to decide whether bitcoin will succeed or not is called "Switching Costs," or the cost of switching from using Bitcon to something else. While true, they may seem very low, such as adding a Litecoin module to your shopping card plugin, you also have to take into account things like support and development, learning about new systems, opening up new accounts, etc. All of these concepts are perfectly exemplified by MS Windows, which had a First Mover advantage with DOS and GUI being built on top of it, Network Effect with everyone using and developing for Windows because everyone else is using it, and Switching Costs, where it would cost a lot in time and lost productivity for people and businesses to switch from it, despite Linux offering much of the same things, including a full office suite, for free. Microsoft tripped up, and may get beaten by Linux eventually, especially since they missed the boat on smartphones and tablets somehow (despite having them first). I don't think the same thing can happen with bitcoin, since it's an open source project from the start, and no one is restricted from developing or improving it.
I don't want to see anyone lose money, but I don't want to see anyone get rich quick due to insider trading either, which is exactly what I think goes on with Bitcoin.
Unless your definition of insider trading is different from mine, ASIC mining has nothing to do with insider trading
