It's more than a dark net market coin for purchasing illicit goods. It's about being able to do a face-to-face transaction and not get robbed because they can't look up your balance.
XMR doesn't have a marketing team, yet is one of the only coins that has consistently gained in BTC value over this year (2017)
Wait until some really wealthy people figure out that Monero is better than a swiss bank account, demand will rocket.
Monero doesn't have monster volume so it gradually breaks out of pattern, people slowly start noticing it and as volume increases, so does the price exponentially. Do not expect 20% gains in 1 minute on this, but you can expect the break outs to be steady and solid.
One could argue that Monero is one of the few coins with an actual real life present day use case.
In the future I see a side chain being built that allows Bitcoin users the option to transact using Monero RingCT technology. This will be an additional layer but nothing will be as secure as Monero (XMR is private by default, it isn't optional...like DASH)
This coin is a great long-term HODL, when monero hits the $180-200 range, it becomes profitable to mine it with spot AWS instances. That basically means an essentially unlimited cap on it's upward momentum.
XMR solved the miner reward issue, where there will never be a "fee-market" based system once all coins are mined, such like Bitcoin. The block rewards stay the same so the amount of XMR minted stays the same. Assuming all the miners sell their XMR immediately means there will be no change in sell pressure. Also, Monero has a relatively fast difficulty adjustment, so there won't be a BCH situation either where blocks are coming in way too fast.
