Back in 2015 I'm looking at Darkcoin/Dash too.
But because of the "instamined coin" issue, I chose Monero.
Thanks again to this warning, I made a profitable decision!
I've been thinking about intentional cripple miner released to the public by monero devs, when thinking about investing in xmr.
But made a decission and invested in both, Dash and monero, before they reached $1. That decission was more profitable
In my books, Dark coin is not considered as a scam coin/"shitcoin" anymore the reason being the simple fact that they have been able to pump is higher than the initial pump.
As a speculator, I do not care too much about having the shiniest tech but the fact that the price goes higher than during the previous pumps. Shitcoins cannot do it.