I just wrote a piece on my page about the amount of 'free' crypto I have earned over the past month. More than 100 USD at market value and that doesn't even include stake rewards or the value of assets I have purchased. Then Hive, I made about a 100 USD in steem let it sit until I realized there was a fork. Converted it to Hive and it's like 300. Not exactly a whale over here but more than what I would make posting to Facebook or something similar. And who knows, maybe an NFT I got for free can yield me a whole ETH one day, or BATs will go to some ridiculous amount in the market.
It all adds up and in time, some of those gains can end up concentrating in larger amounts in real projects, giving a much longer value proposition than selling.