One thing I hate to admit but there are other altcoin that have same feature of bitcoin which has a lower transaction fee for fast transaction like ETH, EOS and so on. The only advantage of bitcoin IMHO is it become the symbol of cryptocurrencies that's why it's popular and many still buying including newbie traders.
Even XRP is really good in terms of transaction speed and price. They are just centralised that's why some people are discouraged to try it. But holding BTC is not as bad as OP describing. As I said above BTC is already the symbol of crypto so there's no way that its value will drop over time.
The reason why Bitcoin is still #1 is way beyond the reason that it's the "symbol" of cryptocurrencies. It's the #1 project simply because it's the most secure, most decentralized, most globally adopted, and most worked on project. Bitcoin being one of the first cryptocurrency projects is just one of the advantages.