The fact that no-one else can just "print" bitcoins, and that you can transfer funds at internet speed to anybody else anywhere in the world and that (after a short time), the transaction cannot be reversed are the main utilities.
In that case, my concern is that I think it will be possible to determine ALL the transactions of that wallet. Making it even less anonymous than regular currencies.
I could be missing something, but if confirmed, that could be a problem for using Bitcoin as a regular currency
But yes, in effect, every transaction is traceable and public, AFAICT.
So, in case someone can trace you to a wallet, that someone can know all your transactions (of course, only the transactions for that wallet), which is a huge potential privacy risk.