I was just thinking whether I had ever bought anything at Target, and then remembered, yes, but that's 7 years ago, and I've gotten new credit cards since. But then I wondered which other online services I had used with my credit card, and it occurred to me how awesome it would be if I had one-time throw-away credit cards, that I could use for only one purchase at one retailer and then throw it away. Now, I know that gift cards work this way, and could theoretically be used in such a way, but they're usually locked to a specific retailer or one can't use them for online purchasing.<p>Then I realised that, really with all the flack it is getting, Bitcoin is such a solution. Once the conversion from $ to BTC is done, there's no way to get your credit card data or anything. You're practically immune against any data theft at the place where you're purchasing.
Now, of course the problem only shifted as you have to guard your private keys now, but that's more or less a question of tooling and usability of proper BTC clients (which hopefully come up in the future). I'd rather have the valuable information stored in an open source application used by millions with strong code review, than in a closed source web app where an intern wrote the code in php and forgot the salt or stored everything plaintext.<p>This alone sounds to me like a pretty strong incentive.