If someone looks into top 30 coins, they can find that 15 coins are just simple currency with similar features, for example they have low cost transaction fee or privacy. The purpose of a currency is to transact economic values and in lesser extent to work as a secure and reliable store of value. Interestingly, among them three (Monero, DASH, ZCash) are privacy coins. There are many privacy coins too in top 100. It can be argued whether do we really need so many transactional or privacy coins to service such a niche: transfer value or store value.
Most important facet of a currency is to transact economic value in secure, fast and cost effective way.
Currently BTC, XRP, BCH, BSV, LTC, IOTA, BTG, XLM, Nano and many others, all privacy coins service this niche.
IOTA and Nano claims to be fast, secure and fee-less.
Then the philosophical question is that why we need BTC, BCH, LTC or BTG who has some amount of fees or slow.
It is not that quite easy to understand. It is perhaps they are primarily working as store-of-value. People still buy gold, other precious metals, arts or antics to store their asset and some cases to speculate. These (e.g. BTC, BCH etc.) coins are servicing this niche better than conventional assets such as precious metals until the speculation keep going.
On the otherhand, STEEM is not only a fee-less transactional currency but also can work as a store of value securely.
Nonetheless, STEEM is one of the best utility coins out there.
It powers up numerous popular DApss such as Steemit.com, 3speak, 
It also provides other smart features such as delegation that has spurred lots of economic activities such as bid bots (i.e. now obsolete) and delegation for token reward (e.g. HUNT, LEO, etc.).
With introduction of Tribes, NFTs and future SMT, Steem will be in level with smart contract based coins such as ETH, EOS or NEO.
STEEM brings utilities by providing earnings to thousands of content creators, investors (curators), entrepreneurs and developers.
Utility coins will probably rule the future since they have intrinsic values through some utilities and functionalities rather than value based on trust and speculation (e.g. BTC, BCH, LTC, DASH etc.).
Usually, Bitcoin and other transactional cryptocurrencies have no fundamental value other than trust. But others have value like ethereum, since it can be used to build new blockchain applications.
There are 10 coins in top 30 with some form of utility but most don't have viable use cases except ETH, EOS or TRON.
Most are still in developing phase (e.g. Cardano), while STEEM is already successful with a social media case with 1.4M user base. However, utility coins such as Steem may have brighter future due to having an intrinsic value.
Utility coins with a working DApps are more likely to appreciate in value this year. Some of top cryptos are not be used by many as aspected other than speculation, meaning they have no utility value.
Therefore, it is a smart decision for investors to invest in utility coins that have use cases and derive intrinsic values by providing services such as DApps, entrepreneurial launchpads, computation/storage etc. rather than simple transaction and store of value.
Transaction and store of value field is crowded with early movers such as BTC, BCH, LTC, DASH.
Now time has come for blockchain tech to bring the power of real utilities. STEEM already having success with successful social media platform will lead the way with features such as SMT, NFTs, and tribes.
Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions. This opinion is only for educational purpose.
Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.
Thanks for reading.
Cryptominer , occasional trader and tech blogger since 2013
Posted via Steemleo