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They can be used for other currencies. For example namecoin must be getting a huge boost from all the bitcoin mining.

My mining pools just throws in namecoins for me. I guess they can check the same hash against both systems.

They could also be used for other blockchain based technologies such as bitmessage, or future voting systems. (I think, correct me if I'm wrong)

Assuming that the hash function does not need to be changed for some reason, of course. That is part of the risk of using hardware crypto: a vulnerability in the cryptosystem is expensive to fix.

Bitmessage isn't blockchain based. Bitmessage, at the moment, is entirely separate from Bitcoin. While in Bitcoin, every full node has a complete transaction history since the network's inception, Bitmessage nodes simply hold every message since 2.5 days ago.

Isn't the proof of work the same as bitcoin though?

(I shouldn't have said blockchain, proof of work would be what the ASIC's are relevant to.)

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