In my opinion XLM will be huge due to many reasons:
FairX exchange is being built on Stellar network. This exchange will be released probably in Q1-Q2 2018 and will allow you buy cryptocurrencies instantly with fiat currency. In may opinion it may just kill Coinbase because:
a) you will be able to buy much more cryptocurrencies than just 3 (Coinbase)
b) Stellar network processing rate is 1000 operations per second (so they probably won't suspend deposits/withdrawals/transactions like on many other exchanges
c) It has IBM's support
d) Stellar network transaction fee is a fraction of a cent (0.00001 XLM)
e) You won't have to pay any extra bank fee for conversion to EUR/USD from your local currency unlike on CoinbaseIt has IBM's support, which is a major IT company. I really doubt that they would back up/invest in something that isn't worth it.
Stellar's team is full of great names, for example
a) Jed McCaleb who is a:
-co-founder of RIPPLE and probably still holding a few billion XRP coins,
-co-founder of Mt. Gox - one of the biggest BTC exchanges from the past,
-creator of eDonkey - big file sharing platform
b) Stellar is being backed up by advisors such as:
-Patrick Collison CEO of STRIPE
- Matt Mullenweg - a founder of WORDPRESS.COM
- Naval Ravikant - CEO and co-founder of ANGEL LIST
In my opinion Stellar is very undervalued project. It's somehow similar to Ripple, but still doesn't have as much attention as it deserves. Once they will announce new partnerships/customers people will start to see, that Stellar has great potential as I am trying to show you now. It's worth noticing that XLM has 2x less coins in circulation than XRP at this moment, that means that if we reached Ripple's market cap, the price would be 2 times higher.
It's now in top 10 coins, so it's gaining more and more attention and investors. I see a hundreds of newcomers everyday on Telegram group and Twitter etc. and as you probably know that if more people know about it, the more money will be pumped in it. Newcomers are more likely to invest in something in top 10 rather than something with small market cap.
Ripple and Stellar use similar code and fundamentals of these two projects are similar in some aspects, anyway Ripple is more for banks, when Stellar is more for people and companies. I met some people that are against banking systems and that's why they entered crypto world. Even though they see potential in the value of XRP they won't invest in it, just because it's very related to banks. They have their rules.
They had a significant number of meetings in December 2017 in Dubai, Singapore, Abu Dhabi etc. it may just be a sign there is something big going to happen.
ICOs - something that Ripple can't provide. ICOs can be built using Stellar. Recent one is Mobius (google it)
I wouldn't expect XLM to go in double-digit this year, but I think that 3-4$ is reachable as far as crypto market won't crash due to any reason.
Just buy, hold and forget about it for a while. Check the price in Q3-Q4 and in my opinion you will be surprised. I could point some more reasons why XLM is a great investment, but I picked up the most important in my opinion.