NEO is a very promising project, but it is always doomed to be the second after ethereum. The main reason is that the NEO project is centralized in contrast to Ethereum, which is decentralized.
Ethereum does have a lot of potential because of that reason. The centralization is not wanted in crypto.
the centralisation is wanted more in asia, where neo is based. Other than that you're right, the main reason why crypto is growing is because the trust in centralisation is decreasing