Why would an average consumer prefer bitcoin over fiat options like credit card and ApplePay to buy coffee?
That's a meaningless comparison. Bitcoin (the blockchain technology) is not a payment system. It does not support chargebacks, it is slow, unreliable, inconvenient, and often expensive to interact with. It's the equivalent of trying to pay by putting bricks of gold in people's mailboxes.
It is however a natively digital, independent, and permissionless asset that can be transferred across the globe, free from censorship, inflation, or theft. Best of all, it achieves these properties without any trusted third parties that control the system.
In this regard, it competes with the dollar and other fiat currencies, not with credit cards. In fact, there is no reason why credit cards denominated in bitcoin (the currency) couldn't exist.
The hope however, is that due to being natively digital and permissionless, it is possible to build far better payment technology on top of this currency than what is possible with the dollar. One promising technology in this regard is the Lightning Network - a layer built on top of Bitcoin that offers cheap, fast, reliable payments which does not undermine the principles Bitcoin was designed for.
So why bother with the slow, expensive, and unreliable layer at the bottom, instead of directly building a payment system? Because different technologies are good for different use cases. In order to build a payment system, you first need something of value to pay with. The blockchain offers a way to do that, as it requires global consistency to guarantee no double spends are possible. But once you have that, there is no need for everyone in the world to know about your coffee - it can just be something between you and the seller.
I fully agree with bitcoin's advantage in banking the unbanked/underbanked and international remittance. To be clear, here I'm asking whether there is , or ever will be, any benefit of using bitcoin in day to day transactions like buying coffee and groceries in places where banking infrastructure is well established like the US, since they are often cited as bitcoin usage examples. – sinoTrinity – 2018-02-18T06:16:21.413
@sinoTrinity If people have Bitcoin and want to spend some instead of cash, yes that is an advantage. Maybe they have some Bitcoin and no cash? – Willtech – 2018-02-19T11:51:50.393