Monero is one of the truly useful coins and perversely one of the worst performing coins price-wise. There is a horrible lesson in there somewhere about hype and endless promises and markets.
This just proves that the crypto markets' idea of "utility" is not "being useful as digital currency", but "be useful as a get-rich-quick scheme". Other coins serve the latter much better than Monero, while Monero serves the first much better in comparison.
When evaluating the potential of coins (in terms of price gains), I nowadays pretty much only look at whether they can serve as enablers for whatever is the currently trending thing whose purpose is to extend the leverage factor of fiat money in crypto. At the moment this is "DeFi", especially crypto lending, and NFTs (although the NFT thing is already tapering off again). Because that's what crypto investors ACTUALLY want: vehicles that increase the leverage factor between fiat money invested in crypto and the total crypto market cap.
Ever since crypto became mainstream, nobody has cared about things like decentralization and 'the tech'. Binance realized this when they released their centralized alternative to ethereum and the gamblers switched over instantaneously for the lower fees.
The same qualities that make a stock or asset desirable (appreciation) make for a bad currency. The expectation of wild appreciation discourages transaction and encourages hoarding.
This is one of the the reasons why (low) target inflation rates exist. The (slight) devaluation of the currency encourages consumption or investment with the currency and discourages mattress stuffing.
Monero has infinite (but low rate) tail emission, meaning the unlike bitcoin the supply approaches infinity. Unless the basket of goods Monero can purchase also goes to infinity, Monero at some point will have inflation.
In most economic models, inflation is not defined as being equivalent to the growth of the monetary base (although that does not stop many Bitcoin and other crypto proponents to claim it is).
In fact, a currency with a constant rate of issuance is actually highly deflationary in a growing economy.
The potential (not actual) Monero supply will surpass the Bitcoin supply in 2044. Lost keys may exceed emission, which would imply deflation of actual supply.
Are ‘cryptocoins’ currency or speculative assets. Both ideally need some diametrically opposed properties; stability vs increasing value at the very least.
I find Ripple and Stellar useful too. I'm not looking at their philosophy or ideology, but I've used both of them to transfer funds quickly. For that, I find them useful. In general, I'm in favor of cryptocurrencies that allow for quick transfers.
This is simply a user perspective. My "crypto perspective" isn't too happy about Ripple, but I can't deny that I enjoy using it for quick transfers.
https://cryptorank.io/performance