The solution crypto assets propose is creating incentives for collaboration. Items on IPFS only remain lively as long as someone is willing to pin a particular

The solution crypto assets propose is creating incentives for collaboration. Items on IPFS only remain lively as long as someone is willing to pin a particular bit of content and is ultimately doing so on a charitable basis. That's not nothing, but you can't scale to the whole internet that way. If you can create incentives to collaborate and participate in the storing and caching of those bits, now you've got a mechanism to scale far beyond what you could achieve on benevolence alone.