To elaborate/explain on this point for those less familiar: those three cryptocurrencies actually are based on real technical innovation, and have developer communities producing more technical innovation. There are many other cryptocurrencies that have zero technical innovation (or completely nonsense innovation) and are merely clones of previous cryptocurrencies with some identifiers tweaked, made purely so investors can pump and dump.
The article in part 5 ("The decline of Maximalism") seems to be criticizing the idea that people would prefer some cryptocurrencies to others, which is completely ridiculous. There are real differences / issues with many.
To strengthen my argument, you wouldn't expect every startup on the Internet to develop their own Apache server, HTTP protocol, and all the other technical innovations that allow for their business to exist, would you?
Maybe I should drop the word "technical": There are many projects out there with no real innovation whatsoever that were created only to facilitate pump-and-dumps rather than to enable some kind of innovation.
It's the only kind that matters; all other innovation should be built on top of those using the technically innovative base as a building block. Launching "new" coins that are merely clones are simply going to lead to failure. Bitcoin is not like Apache, you can't just grab its code and use it and think you've got what bitcoin has. Bitcoin is not its code, Bitcoin is its network, Bitcoin is like Facebook, network effects dominate, and you must use actual Bitcoin, not just launch a Bitcoin clone, to benefit from it.
I don't want them making their own Apache server in the exact same way I don't want them making their own coin. They should use an existing standardized setup. A smart contract can be useful. A "coin in support of X charitable effort, come mine today" is pretty much nonsense.
Ethereum is actually technically inferior as a platform for tokens, but it has a fantastic community which is very much into tokens, so that's why it is much bigger than what you see on other platforms (BitShares, Nxt, Omni, Counterparty, WAVES...)
You can see applications built on it -- decentralized exchanges, prediction markets, derivates/derivative markets, gambling sites and so on.
It's kinda ridiculous to demand "actively utilize today", although some apps are in active use, but they are pretty niche.
At this point we talk about what _can_ be built, not what _was_ built.
As for 'tangible value', tangibility is very subjective. There are still people who claim that Bitcoin has no tangible value, but I bet if you were living in a country with an unstable banking system, ridiculous capital controls and high crime rate, you'd see Bitcoin's value
There's been a recent example of someone running a Ponzi using BTC, but that's not an example of a currency being a Ponzi, which is a thing more specific than "scam."
I'm not familiar enough with LTC to say if this will continue for the future, but thats the standard argument in favor.
(Anyone with a passing familiarity w/ CCs would know this, but still, it feels like statements that are so blatantly counterfactual should probably be noted.)
The on-chain atomic swap (no Lightning Network involved yet) was executed using Decred technology ( https://github.com/decred/atomicswap ) and was preceded by a DCR-LTC swap ( https://blog.decred.org/2017/09/20/On-Chain-Atomic-Swaps/ ).
(De)credit where credit is due. ;-)
In particular, as coauthor of the lightning spec, I assure you that we're all working on bitcoin. Litecoin happened because it was trivial; interestingly, we've deferred Bitcoin mainnet because it's likely to attract real users, who'll risk real money.