Here are some of the reasons why some of my friends and I purchase digital currencies. We would like to hear about your opinion and wonder what triggers you to have some digital currencies 
.
For most of the currency-currency: like Bitcoin, Monero
- curiosity, more or less like wanting to keep a treasure for offsprings (for example, feeling that Bitcoin may become really really expensive due to its scarcity in the future)
- worrying devaluation of fiat money
- depositing money on different places for security reasons (for example, one day if the bank account is hacked, we can still withdraw some life saving money from the digital currency)
- for investment reason, want to make some money out of the stock
there is another reason for it excluding my friends and I:
5, for hiding/holding wealth - for some particular types of people
——————————————————————————————————
For most of the Proof-of-stake service-curerncy: like Ethereum AND Ethereum Classic, there are some additional reasons for us to purchase
6, for development
7, for accessing the “ETHER net” (betting, paying dividends, using storage/computing resources on the distributed web)
——————————————————————————————————
For some Proof-of-importance service-currency: like NEM, there are more additional reasons for us to purchase:
8, for harvesting (like receiving interests from the bank)
9, for purchasing real goods from NEM acceptable online shops?
We do hope one day NEM can build the NEM net, so there may be another reason here:
10, for accessing the NEM net (playing games, etc, which hasn’t been built yet)
——————————————————————————————————
We think Ethereum + MetaMask construct a solid reason for some people to buy ETH for casual use. For example, if they want to play blockjack.io, they have to get MetaMask and have a wallet with some ETH. In the future, if people want to use Golem or SWARM, they have to get ETH as well.
However, in terms of scalability, ETH is a bit slow compared with NEM. And they have security issues, this is another lesson I learned from their ENS launch. If NEM taps into this area (distributed web), can it do a better job?
IMHO, ETH’s price is too high and a bit slow for transaction, for now. But I am still holding some, for using their service and researching further about their plans.