Whence Bitcoin

Bitcoin - and its focused leveragors and imitators like Ripple - have gained a lot of press and traction. The question that I keep coming back to is, what are they good for? I do not mean this in a cynical sense, but in a literal, "what is the best use case" sense? The answers I keep coming back to are two, and only two: Person to person payments International transfers I am, for now, ignoring the "