I feel like this is the *real* reason. The delusion these people feel is trying to justify the "reasons" why they are doing it, but they can't ignore the underlying reality.
Also, will it surprise them when Bitcoin does indeed do another 10X or 100X? It will, the only factor is how long it will take. Bitcoin is held by < 0.01% of the world population. Not every millionaire in the U.S. has any bitcoin. Wall Street hasn't even begun to up-leverage Bitcoin, because they don't have a way to do it effectively yet.
That's one reason, and also a major one. Sometimes it's not the main reason. Let's take an example. One of these alts wants to recreate the equivalent of a decentralized netflix or youtube. Without thinking twice, the first to adopt this tech would be pirates and porn star cam girls. Then some rapper who names himself after half a currency is going to accept the alt as payment for his latest album.
So there are people backing this coin and don't care about the price, they just want to support it. Why? There are distributed computing projects out there with NEGATIVE ROI such as calculating prime numbers (a mersenne was recently found), or cures for cancer, or searching for extra terrestrial life.
Like I said before, someone has to buy the pizza.
A 1000X increase is just a side effect when everyone wants free HBO and nothing can stop them.
And don't forget there are other payment processors that accept alts, some are even embedded in ios and android wallets, some are coinpayments compatible. There are open source alternatives to bitpay.
A specific example is a seller of flash hiders on gunbroker.com is accepting GUNcoin as payment. Weedcoin, Potcoin, Dopecoin, Cannabiscoin, they are catering to the medical marijuana industry. Some have celebrity endorsement. So ... let's see what happens in the next few months or years with all these alts.
Disclaimer: I have some GUN because I like firearms. I don't have Potcoin because I have no intention of buying.