WTF are we investing in????

Im not picking on Kyber, I actually think its an awesome idea and I have some. This example can apply to any of the functional coins.

Lets say I have 1000 KNC coins that I bought on an exchange.

Value of the KNC goes up and down daily.

How does this help the KNC network???

Nowhere in the white paper does it mention that the network uses KNC coins.

So how is the coin related to the success of the network? I get that the ICO raises money for the dev team.

Just to further my point, lets say the Kyber network DOES need the coins to work, wouldnt increasing the value of the KNC coin make it more expensive to use the network?? How can this be good for the network?

I guess that if the dev team has not released all the coins and the value increases it helps the team raise money selling them back to an exchange but this does not help the consumer because the cost of using the coin and network would increase also.

Maybe this market and technology is too young to answer my question, but there is no where that I have found that can explain how these coins are going to make money in the real world.

I am invested in crypto, but the more think about how the increasing value of coins hurt the functionality of the coin, the more I think we all just investing in the equivalent of digital gems that are for collection purposes only and that scares me.