Limited Supply - Look at Bitcoin $BTC, it has value and will continue to have value because their is a limited supply...it will be come a scare commodity and with scacity come demand which correlates to price.
Technology / Utiliy - ETH, BTC, Dash, NEO, Ripple (don't judge me...its only for illustration here) are all super cool first mover technologies (or protocals if you will - more on this below). The smart contracts in NEO & ETH is what makes it standout and gives it value and the tokens being issued on its network give it utiliy..Dash's privacy is it's selling point. BTC has it's utiliy as a *currency/ store of value *
Team && Community - This for me is one of the most important things to look for after the above two points. Aslo follow industry speakers, general community take on the crypto. The team has to have great credentials and you should be able to see code commits on Github and get a feel for the work/code they've put in. You want to give them money - so they have to produce the end product then isnt it so?
Speculation - So then, if the community is the behind the project then you need market speculation which will help with the future use-cases and future price of the crypto.
Protocal Vs App
The protocal effect as I like to call it in my opinion has much more potential for a project/coin to shoot up in value in terms of both utility, speculation and price. Take NEO and ETH for example their underlying technology allows for ICO's and token issue-ing on it platforms. If just one or two of the many tokens on ETH or NEO (in the futue) takes off then the usage of those tokens (on the underlying ETH/NEO protocal's) will cause the underlying network (ETH/NEO) to increase big time in value and use i.e price.
Just my take on crypto-economics
Looking forward to your comments.