What could convince you, as a skeptic, that crypto currencies are a technological step forward and deliver value to humans?
The coin rewards would drop, but the rewards for being able to steal whatever else is running on top of the chain stay the same. So to be secure the layer 1 chain has to stay more valuable than everything else that's being secured on top of it, otherwise it becomes worth doing a 51% attack on the underlying chain to get the stuff on top.
It's like when religious people say: "Jesus will come again, but he may tarry...".
Oh what's that? You really think 12 years of development is too long to buy a sandwich. Well if that's an issue for you I recommend you look into this thing "Quantum Computing." They can't even make those things do calculator math and its been forever. Sheesh.
(To your first point, not your second.)