I believe that Steem is significantly undervalued relative to many other cryptocurrencies for quite a few reasons. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather, just a few of the reasons why I think investors and speculators are underestimating its potential.
Technology
Steem has industry-leading technology built into its blockchain.
First and Foremost, Steem offers free transfers. If a currency is going to be used far and wide, it needs to be cheaper and easier to use than existing currencies.
At 3-second block times, Steem is much faster than Bitcoin's 10-minute block times.
Steem has savings accounts built into the blockchain allowing for secure storage of the currency.
Steem has account names rather than long strings of random numbers and letters which makes transfers much more simple.
Steem has account recovery which is unheard of in the crypto world. Even if someone gets ahold of your private keys, you can probably recover your account.
Thanks to its delegated proof of stake, Steem doesn't waste an enormous amount of electricity like Bitcoin does.
Blockchain Usage
Steem processes more than 6 times the number of transactions that Bitcoin processes and many more than any other cryptocurrency. Steem is able to do so using a tiny amount of its capacity, whereas Bitcoin has struggled with its capacity over much of its lifetime.
SMTs
With the upcoming SMTs (Smart Media Tokens), I think we'll see thousands of more entrepreneurs coming to Steem to build their projects. SMTs will create a "turn-key" business opportunity for people looking to tokenize anything.
Any influencer, community, business, city, or government will be able to easily create an SMT to make their operations far more efficient, give their community members a vote, and reward participation in a community.
I think SMTs will go a long way tokenizing the internet and Steem will be a major benefactor in this revolution.
Community
It's hard to find a community like the one behind Steem. It's not only massive and growing every day, there's also a tremendous amount of passion. The Bitcoin community is extremely divided and it has failed miserably at making changes.
Steem, on the other hand, is extremely nimble. The Steemit team, in combination with the witnesses and community members, have been able to make necessary changes quickly when needed.