For those with more questions,I hope this helps. I had some time so I decided to screw around with it. I'm not too pleased so far. As far as privacy it seems to be the shit and after messing around with it, it's not as difficult. I downloaded 3 wallets: bread, Blockchain and BitPay.
Getting a wallet is a cakewalk; figuring out how to get coins is a pain in the ass. So I tried two methods, Coinbase and a bitcoin ATM. I was lucky enough to have one like 15 mnts from me.
Coinbase
Coinbase allowed me to deposit up to $150 by charging it to my card. You can only use MasterCard and Visa and that's the limit they preset for you. I believe this is a weekly limit. Don't quote me one it. You can bump that limit up but you have to upload a pic of your ID or DL. Screw That. So I decided not to. You also have the option to link your bank account to it and you'll have a higher limit (I believe is like $2500) by doing this but there is a verification period of 5 days before you can use it. I proceeded with the my cc and charged 10 bucks. Coinbase then will want you to verify two small charges they'll post on your cc account. After veryfying this, I was able to buy coins up to an amount of 150. I bought $10 worth and they charged me .99 cents as a processing fee. That's it. I had bitcoins!!!! However small but finally I owned a piece of a coin. Then I proceeded to sending the bitcoins to Blockchain. That was easy, you just enter your BTC address and voila. I got charged 2 bucks and some change for this. Not too bad a fee but I am wondering what that would be if it were a higher transfer amount. Blockchain reflected the amount sent within less than a minute. No biggie, lost only about 3 bucks when everything was said and done.
Bitcoin ATM
Holy shit, it was easy. YET expensive. This ATM literally walks you through it. From what I can still recall:
Step 1, click buy coins. Step 2, enter your phone number where you want a code to be sent. Step 3, enter the code on the ATM screen. Step 4, damn, it wanted to scan my ID. By this point I was vested and too excited so I went for it. Step 5, enter the amount of cash you want to render and feed it to the slot. Step 6, open the wallet where you want the coins to go and click on receive. Scan the barcode. And done. You'll have bitcoins just like that. Here is the fucked up part, the exchange rate they charge is way higher than the going rate. Without getting to specific, let's just say I put in 180 bucks and only got 158 bucks worth in bitcoins. That's a huge charge! I get that you can't put a price on privacy but hell, at that amount it makes me think twice.
If someone else knows of a better route please share as some of us are rookies to this. Still, I got bitcoins! Lol and feel accomplished.
So OP if you can hook It up with a good discount to offset my loses right now, I may consider ordering after sleeping on it.