I don’t fault someone for being curious about other use cases, and I’m not the type who claims “everything else is a scam” (which strikes me as arrogant, even though nearly all the other tokens are, in fact, affinity schemes or pump-and-dump scams). 

The issue is that blockchains are extremely slow and inefficient (which GREAT for a new global sound monetary base layer, but not great for the majority of other proposed crypto projects), and unless it’s sufficiently decentralized - like Bitcoin - the “rule of law” that Bitcoin’s blockchain offers is rendered irrelevant by more centralized projects. 

The fact is that most of these projects are run by a company and are rug-able to one extent or another, which defeats one the primary purposes of a blockchain.

For these reasons (and others), my curiosity is tempered by the fact that most of these other cryptos are not actually that interesting. You can spend years studying Bitcoin and understanding the ceaseless and interconnected ways that it impacts the world. Most crypto tokens (etc) are just not that interesting under the hood, or that impactful.

On the other hand, private-public key cryptography — actual crypto — is fascinating. The power that it gives to individuals cannot be understated, and it’s highly likely that many implementations of this crypto will add value to the world, over the coming years. It just doesn’t seem like it needs a blockchain to do it. (Example: Nostr). 

The actual “reason” or “use case” for blockchain tokens, in most of these other projects, is that it gives the founders and VCs an fast route to make tons of easy money (at the expense of under-educated retail investors), and it’s pitched as “needing a money for the project” when Bitcoin/Lightning would work fine and is actually decentralized, actually, permission-less, based on real-world proof-of-work, and all-around un-fuckable.