Blockchain applications without cryptocurrency

so i'm looking at this blockchain talk all over the internet. on major media companies. and even memes on 9gag. and of course cryptocurrencies go hand-in-hand with the blockchain, but i don't think people are realising quite how powerful this infrastructure is.

consider the Ethereum Ropsten network. you can get free ethereum to make transactions and it works pretty much the same as the main network. you also have the content addressed IPFS protocol which provides storage for large files.

there are other blockchain like Cardano being developed to do away with transaction fees altogether. so it seems there will be an infrastructure that will provide near-unlimited file storage and computational resource.

so the question is why are people so heavily inclined to create Dapp's with an underlying crypto currency? from what i can tell, this seems to be legitimately a suitable infrastructure for general application development. (of course with certain limitation like transaction latency).

of course i understand that money is a common motivation for businesses to develop applications and so include a cryptocurrency as a way to make profit, but the technology is accessible to everyone. i would think that at least some developer hobbyist may have used the technology to do something with the technology because it is basically providing a free webserver infrastructure.

are there any examples of dapps that are free to use a provide a free service?

i have heard of Uport which run on the Ropsten network, but i don't know of any others.