Does coindash really need coins?

I would like to preface this with the fact that I am a big fan of Coindash. I am for sure buying into the ICO and I downloaded the beta and think the idea is awesome. It is really easy to use too, which I greatly appreciate bc I am technologically challenged. Basically what it does is takes the addresses of your altcoins and creates a portfolio for you with charts and stuff. I am keeping this really simple guys.... Anyways, this is intended to be a social network of sorts where traders can show their investments and gains and losses which gives the novice trader or complete newb some investing insight. Honestly, I wish I had something like this when I started trading bc I made my share of mistakes and missed out on several opportunities. Coindash wants to make crypto trading accessible to the majority of the population who are potential investors but find the process of engagement daunting. All good stuff....

But like so many other ICOs and altcoins I have researched, I find myself wondering why it needs a coin. In the white paper they touch on this topic briefly, saying the features are all going to be paid for with the coindash coin. The problem is that this type of social platform might be something that people (especially newbs) would expect for free. Also, why do they need a special coin for this? It's like when you go to a carwash and you have to pay for it with those stupid carwash tokens and you always end up with extra and it is a pain in the ass. I think if they took eth or bitcoin they might get more business especially with newbs. So I could be way off base here and not understanding the technical reasons that necessitate a coin being used but sometimes I wonder why a specific coin is needed for so many platforms that could just work together. Someone please explain this to me....