So a few thoughts & observations from watching coinmarketcap this week.
as I type this the total market cap is over $52 BILLION.
I remember a few months ago it was around 21 Billion total.. so a TON of new money has flooded into crypto in the last 6+ months
Bitcoin's Dominance is at an all time low, only 52%

Looking at the top 10-20 coins, it looks like there's a flood of people trying to get in on the "penny" coins trying to cash in on the next big thing. all the "major" coins, bitcoin, eth, dash etc. are all well over $50-100 apiece, too much for anyone to really try and gain some cash from speculating.
Nem, Ripple, Lumens etc have all had tremendous gains recently, and they're all the ones that were or are a few cents.

Even with Nem's meteoric rise in price, it's still only trading with a fraction of the volume of the other penny coins, $45 million vs. $300+ million for ripple and lumens.. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing but it's worth noting.

Nem is now at $0.13 with a 1.2 billion marketcap. I think it's stuck in that self serving cycle right now. Price and interest is up, so more buy in/out, which increases popularity, which increases price, rinse and repeat.
Who knows where this rollercoaster ends but personally I don't see why we can't end up with a market cap like ripple somewhat soon. The amount of nem and how cheap they are make it seem like it's possible. 6-7 billion cap i think is in reach, barring a major slide in everything.

and lastly, This has all been done without catapult or any large earth shattering corporate partnership. (I'm aware that some companies are testing some aspects of nem out) but once something goes mainstream with one of these tech deals coupled with catapult's release, we could really be onto something if that happens.