Monero have been the highest trading volume pair for a long time over at exchange poloniex, it is very easy to understand why it is so fundamentally good, XMR could very well be the coin that gets used a lot in countries where BTC is forbidden or made illegal, XMR could shine in russia for example if BTC is going to be banned in russia by 2014 and it has attracted a lot of early bitcoiners as well, and by this I mean core developers who have taken a look at other coins with the underlying technology and chosen Monero over a lot of others.