There was no need for you to waste time with altcoins, bitcoin is becoming even better for business and small "Lightning" payments
There are definitely other factors at play here
And we have already seen them in action. People won't pay with Bitcoin for things you mention (like daily necessities or haircut), even if it would cost them nothing in terms of fees and time. But it doesn't mean either that Bitcoin will be useless and worthless. It will just turn into digital gold (it is not yet) but without gold's shortcomings and deficiencies. And this is where altcoins are going to pick up the lead as with Bitcoin being new gold (a store of value), using altcoins as change money would make perfect sense
I have actually bought things with bitcoin, just not daily needs directly. Indirectly by selling for fiat, yes. Once LN becomes universal in wallets, i see no reason not to pay little things directly as well, as long as the business accepts
BTC. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, pay for things in satoshis, especially if as you say, the value of bitcoin will keep going up. Unlike gold that remains mostly fixed in place
This doesn't count
Because merchants may not even know that you paid them with a cryptocurrency (in this case with Bitcoin), let alone accepting it as a legit means of payment. And I'm afraid LN won't mend matters in this department as it is not merchants who are a limiting factor here. And while you (and me too, for that matter) are ready to pay for small things with cryptocurrencies (though, personally, I would prefer to pay with lites, not bitcoins), this is not what most cryptocurrency users are inclined to do at large
Gold itself used to be used for payment, but it got so expensive that it got tricky to pay small amounts with it. Bitcoin doesn't have that problem, not only has 8 decimals already, but can quickly be expanded into 16, should a time come where a single satoshi becomes too much money
The problem is not with Bitcoin and its decimal places, the problem is with the majority of people not willing to use it as a means of payment