Let me start by saying that I avoid investing in ERC20 tokens like the plague. Sending/swapping generally costs more than the total value of the tokens that I'm sending/swapping. I don't know why any project would choose to run their app/token on ethereum when considering the cost of gas. For a comparison, scroll through the list of coins supported by Atomic Wallet and click send on a few of them. You don't need any coins in your wallet to do this. You'll discover that nearly every other coin costs a fraction of a cent ($0.01) to send. But click on any ERC20 token in that wallet and you'll see a gas cost between $10-$17 (e.g., coti or lrc).
I have a bunch of ERC20 tokens in a wallet that I don't use and would love to close and forget. It only contains those tokens. But the tokens aren't supported on any exchange that I use which only leaves uniswap. In order to convert the tokens to a different ERC20 token that is supported on my preferred exchange it will cost me $17 in ETH. Then I'll have to pay another $17 in ETH to send them to my exchange account. I don't own any ETH so I'll have to purchase $34 worth plus CC fees. Let's say a total of $37. The total value of my tokens is only $50 but I'm expected to pay $37 to swap and then send them to a different account. The math doesn't add up. I'd probably pay $1 to swap those tokens but not $37. So for now I have to leave them where they are and probably never use them again because the gas cost is so high.
Why does it cost so much more to send ERC20 tokens than other coins and tokens? Is there any way around the problem I described above? Will ETH 2.0 solve this and what do you expect the gas cost to be on the new 2.0 platform?
EDIT
I wanted to add that I suspect the value of a large percentage of tokens is based largely on the fact that no one can afford to send/exchange/sell them. So in financial terms what does that mean? If no one's selling, the price remains stable. The second that the gas cost declines significantly, the more people will be selling those tokens that they've been holding. If ETH 2.0 does in fact reduce gas cost to a few cents per transaction expect the value of tokens to plummet. My 2 cents...