We have seen the token mania, people who wanted to print or buy tokens for no logic reason. A token for taxis, a token for gold and oil and then bubble exploded.
Why should you pay a taxi or a taxist should accept a currency specific for taxis?
None
Which token economy have a reason to exist?
Here my point of view. Some are for communities and revenue or power sharing some others aren't very needed but are guaranteed by an authority or a trusted company.
Governance and future inflation token - Steemit STEEM / EOS
A dapp (dao/dac) where token holders vote who will receive the future inflation. It can be used in many scenarios like a prize for the best Block Producers or Communities or content. Pure holders risk to have a diluited capital if they don't have an active participation.
Consume and burn token - Binance BNB, MakerDAO MAKER
It has nothing to do with decentralization, but it is cheap, easy and useful. A token like Binance BNB. You can use it to pay discounted trading fees and Binance promise to rebuy and burn it (it helps to maintain the price)
Basically you are preselling your future good, like a crowdfunding.
Another use case is when You make an useful dapp and people pay a fee in your token to enable some features, like the ability to print the DAI token (decentralized USD stablecoin).
Token backed by real goods - many
If you are a trusted organization or company, you can print tokens which rapresent gold, oil, land,.. so people can trade future goods more easly.
It isn't particulary interesting because you could also do it with an Excel spreadsheet. If the supply isn't auditable people should trust on you even more.
Security shares - ...
Casino dapps airdrop tokens to early adopters players. It works as incentive for marketing and it works as a passive income investment. Because a % of the casino revenues are shared proportionally with token holders. The risk to be a scam is also very high if it isn't a regulated entity.
Ponzi schemes - ..
It's illegal in many countries but many high profitable investment tokens which guarantee a fixed % gain and a referral incentive are just a scam. But people like them, because basically the latest users pay to the previous ones.. and it works until no new users are found and the pyramid collapse.
Credit tokens - ...
Amazon could print an Amazon dollar (example), which basically is a $ 1 spendable on Amazon services. I could be distribuited as cashback when you use real dollars for a purchase. Why not a normal GIFT card? The reason mainly is to incentive future purchases, marketing, and you don't need to mantain an infrastructure for it. STEEM / EOS are better because they have to trasaction fees.