I've been reading a lot about IOTA lately and am convinced it's going to be huge, for a couple reasons.
It's based on an entirely new technology. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are based on the blockchain and have a different (and maybe not really competing) function, IOTA is based on an entirely (or mostly) new concept, the tangle. A tangle is a distributed ledger, but the structure is totally different, much more organic, versatile and adaptive than a blockchain. Less store of value and more medium of exchange. It's more unproven than many projects which are layered on top of Ethereum, but also has a ton of revolutionary potential.
They have a working product, unlike many projects.
There is a real world use case: the Internet of Things. Whether or not IOTA can capitalize on it is a different discussion, but there is no doubt in my mind that the Internet of Things is going to be enormous. The timing of the adoption curve of smart refrigerators, cars and lightbulbs is unclear but I do think we'll move inevitably towards more distributed, more autonomous computing in more devices. A tangle seems better suited to those use cases because its proof of work is much lighter, serves a different function, and doesn't require parsing the entire history of the currency to verify micro account balances.
Superficially, the name is perfect: succinct, suited to the target (IoT), and a clever double meaning.
It's still super cheap and off it's highest price. Most of the cryptocurrency space is still pretty speculative, but I think this is a pretty good wager.
There are a shitload of people working on it, both on staff and crowdsourced. Again, unlike many projects. Check their Slack, there are a ton of people building it out and helping people get onboarded.
The whitepaper is extremely technical, unlike many projects.
It's supposedly somewhat quantum resistant. Unfortunately I don't fully understand it yet but with quantum computers FAR outpacing Moore's law (2000qubits just announced for next year, vs 16qubits in May2017) this is going to be relevant very soon. At least as relates to SHA256. Hmm... I wonder what other parts of the Internet that'll affect...