Apparently many people disagree with you that the bitcoin protocol has no meaning without bitcoins because people are willing to pay 40 bucks for litecoins using the same protocol.
Bitcoin and Litecoin work on the same protocol? So you mean I can send you LTC to your BTC address?
Fact is, the scarcity argument that BTC is limited to 21 million is a complete and utter myth. It can be replicated a gazillion times over with the exact same properties, just called by a different name.
BTC is still limited to 21 million even if there are 21 million other altcoins in existence.
How absurd would it sound if you applied this false btc scarcity logic to something like gold. If tomorrow, someone invented material that looked and behaved like gold, the exact same properties, etc with an unlimited amount that can be created but called it Koalapuss instead of gold, would gold be scarce anymore ? Obviously not, the price of gold would plummet to zero.
If you could produce something with the exact same properties as gold, it would be gold. But you are right in that case the value of gold would likely fall ... If you could produce unlimited bitcoins the same would happen. But that's (currently) not possible, because it would work on a different blockchain an therefore cannot be the "exact" same.
I can see value in the bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin itself is worth nothing. Zilch. It is no different then litecoin or quarkcoin or tulipcoin. And all of them are worth nothing because they can all be run on the same bitcoin-like protocol and therefore an unlimited supply of these 'coins' can be created.
You are right that all coins are crypto currencies, but they don't have equal properties, therefore are not interchangeable.
When this finally dawns on people, watch out. You'll be seeing bitcoin suicides. Whether intentional or not, this has all the makings of a grand pyramid model. In a hundred years, btc might be talked about similar to how tulipmania is mocked now.
We will see what the future holds. It's true that btc could fail, but I wouldn't bet on it...