I'm just not convinced that we know with certainty that POW has no other uses. What if bitcoin is simply the first — not the first AND last?

ancient Chinese alchemists: there is no use for gunpowder outside medicine 

 I think it’s a fun idea to use it as a roll system. Imagine for the game to accept the item the nonce tag has to be less than a certain value. Then you would be guaranteed that a high pow roll was really lucky.