I view the current cryptocurrency wave as proof of concept experiments of some very exciting technology. Building blocks that allow new design oportunities for things that were not viable or easily previously.
Hopefully we do leave the laughable ICO era behind, and even if traditional relational databases get cryptographic features, but I feel the sum of capabilities the new technology can offer is larger than that.
I'm unsure if incentives (the coins) must be a part of every application of this technology. I was open to thinking that it might not, but recently saw this presentation from a Andreessen Horowitz's partner [1] where he strongly asserts that yes, it must, and I'm thinking he might have a point.