The first address you typed was transacted here: https://blockchain.info/address/1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu and you can easily click and follow it into a large exchange where it was probably turned into some other money. Any investigator with half a brain could do this too. Merchants or exchanges or anyone else at the receiving end of a transaction do not get to "choose" who they want to do business with since, as I pointed out, there is no flag, and secondlm most of it is automated, nobody decides anything.
Why would any rational person invest one penny in a market like that?
Nobody is investing. There are quite a few speculators who are hoping for a lot more commerce to drive up the demand for bitcoins. There are geeks who just like it for the elegance and mining lottery. The rest of the early adopters like me recognize that this is the future of digital commerce. There are huge productivity improvements already in having a worldwide staff of programmers willing to do small tasks for small amounts of coin. That will blossom into much more worldwide digital commerce even without any exchanges and their ubiquitous speculators.
Very hard for me to understand why.
What exactly is wrong with today's digital commerce?
In my own case, I don't see how it could be any simpler or less expensive.
Most of my bills are paid automatically by my credit card, and the rest are paid by a one second swipe.
All my income is on direct deposit.
I wrote one check in the last two years, for my new Drivers License.
My checking account is free.
My credit card is free and gives cash back each month.
Not one account holder at my bank has lost one penny in the last 80 years.
Why would I want to change something this simple, this reliable, and this transparent?
I also can't imagine what advantage merchants would see in bitcoins.
It would be too dangerous to have a bitcoin account because anyone with superior technology could make all your money disappear.
And, on the opposite end, there would be the perpetual risk of civil lawsuits claiming you accepted stolen bitcoins, plus the perpetual risk of criminal indictment for laundering stolen bitcoins.
Bitcoin may be the future for tax evasion and drug money, but for everything else, I don't get it.