Bitcoin is far worse than many many other cryptocurrencies. Ethereum, for example, got a lot of advantages with the better block time and the better technology. Blockchain technology is useful for far more than keeping track of a currency's balances, and Ethereum lets developers build applications without having to build their own blockchain.
Litecoin is like Bitcoin in many ways, but it has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation.
Dash (originally known as Darkcoin) is a more secretive version of Bitcoin. Dash offers more anonymity as it works on a decentralized mastercode network that makes transactions almost untraceably
Bitcoin price is not reflected in its technology, in fact most coins aren't really dependent that much on their technology to achieve success. Many many shitcoins have a high value and many high quality coins have a low value. This will eventually change in the future but for now, you can get rich investing in shit coins. Welcome to the crypto world.
We are seriously in full hype mode at the moment. Good tech is being beaten by great marketing. The hype must go away at some point, but who knows when.....
I'm pretty sure there will be so many better coins than bitcoin made in the next few years. But the network effect is seriously strong...