I had this question a few years ago when I started exploring more about the crypto world. It was not clear to me why there are hundreds if not thousands of alt-coins and who would want to trade them when we all know that there are only a few popular ones that are worth trading. But that’s the point of view of a traditional trader. If your intention is only to trade with crypto, then you would not understand the real value of altcoins. One needs to compare the alt coins and their value to one of the penny stocks back in the day. Penny stocks provided an opportunity for investors to double, triple or even more their capital in a relatively short period of time. It is similar to alt coins. One needs to understand that every coin out there represents a project, or a company if you make the parallel with the penny stocks. While the majority of those projects probably would never succeed, I am sure that there is a place for new projects to emerge and its coin to go to the moon. Maybe I am wrong, but that’s how I see altcoins.
Since I've asked the question, I've started to think about brands like Apple, Ford, etc creating their own currency that you had to use to buy their products. There will be many different coins and they'll have an exchange rate like dollars to yen does now. Each company would have control of their own economy so to speak and the government printing money wouldn't be a wild card they would have to worry about anymore. But they could print their own money if they saw fit. The problem with my thinkings is that Bitcoin doesn't produce anything for me to buy with Bitcoin. Now a Tesla coin that could purchase a car at any time in the future would be awesome!