Other people have pointed that out before, i.e. that other anon coins have been given a try-out in the DNM's before but they all failed to stick.
The BIG DIFFERENCE this time, I think, is that NOW there is an increasing use of so-called Chain-Analysis ramping up BIG TIME with bitcoin.
Agreed! There's a huge number of use cases for the Monero style blockchain. That's why it's exciting to me - it can do things Bitcoin absolutely cannot. Bitcoin's core value proposition is that it's a censorship resistant open ledger.. Something very very different and of course, valuable just like XMR is for it's unique feature set.
Most coins that come along, it's fairly easy (in general) to make that case; That using Bitcoin for whatever the new coin's purpose was, works better than bothering with a new coin at all. Most are redundant. But it seems that XMR does fill a legit space in the crypto currency market. Only time will tell of course if that's enough to really give it the market cap it needs to support a bit of price stability and sizable investors. We got a long way to grow, but usually when price corrections happen, they happen so quickly (those big ole upwards ones that come out of nowhere), it's not worth risking too much trying to time the short term..