Another point: Old school bitcoin enthusiasts have been easy to sell on Monero from the start, and it is not so easy to ignore among the scamcoin hordes any longer, so I expect a lot of them to get on the bandwagon in the coming 6 months or so. They will bring their network and social capital with them.
^^That^^
It is a difficult paradigm shift for the masses still. There have been zero assets to compare with Monero, so it makes it that much more difficult. I got into BTC when I read the whitepaper, a membership and knowledge about this forum came much later unfortunately otherwise I would have been a bit more financially successful (rocket had left the station) and I was just left admiring the math.
When the CryptoNote whitepaper came out, I knew what was in store. I also pleaded with @thankful_for_today to make changes initially, both in forum and in IRC but that was one headstrong dude. I miss @tacotime's presence these days. We were both OPs in the initial IRC channel that we later surrendered to the current team. Good times.
I bet the CN team are all pleased with the hard work and continued research publications that come out from the current team regardless of the external animosity at times. The cryptography is top notch math.
Even Ethereum has published a lot of good papers. But there is no way that a model of distribution like that will see long term success. It has to be meaningful blood and sweat with respect to mining and verification for it to make sense and it is going to take a while for everyone to get off that train. This is also a big short coming and narrow sightedness of zcash. Awesome math, bad model. They will be flipped for Bitcoins and that is where it will end. XMR is going to be the real wealth.
I agree with the fundamental of xmr but pumps like these in succession will not end up attracting users in the end.
I disagree. XMR at $30-$50 will see far more "investments" ( compared to the current prices) from the network we are talking about here. They won't see it at the moment, and won't let their network see it (scamcoiners that is). Currently the ones who are getting in know exactly what is going on and what is in store for the future. They are not going to make a splash about it. Roger Ver seems to be an exception to this, and I very much doubt his authenticity as well given that this is a potential conflict of interest. He may be genuinely diversifying but hard to say.