What do you mean by Bitcoin being ahead of the Blockchain tech? Of course there are lots of people all over the world interested in mining and trading Bitcoin. That's because, as you pointed out, they can make money off of it. There are loads of other possible applications for blockchain though. They don't actually have to have anything to do with a crypto currency. It's just the idea of having a ledger shared across many different systems. If you just Google applications for blockchain, you'll see that many people are working on other ideas. This includes using blockchain for elections, shipping companies, online payment systems, etc.