I tend to agree with your assessment, but you are dancing around an important point.
Most people in the world don't live in a first world democracy. Today, many of these countries are stable and providing currency for their citizens. But ask a Venezuelan if they can see a reason why we might want an alternative to a state backed currency and I feel like the answer is self-evident.
Vitalik saw this use case and talked about how disheartened he was by the ICO boom because it was use cases like this that he believed in, so it isn't at all an afterthought.
Most people in the world don't live in a first world democracy. Today, many of these countries are stable and providing currency for their citizens. But ask a Venezuelan if they can see a reason why we might want an alternative to a state backed currency and I feel like the answer is self-evident.
Vitalik saw this use case and talked about how disheartened he was by the ICO boom because it was use cases like this that he believed in, so it isn't at all an afterthought.