it went up because it was being added to arguably the top exchange in cryptoland. I really like monero, it is the choice of t=coin the blackmarket uses, but it is not the only super private and secure coin out there, as others have mentioned there are coins with less supply and as secure as monero. but i have friends who have been mining monero and say it's not as profitable as ether, dash and bitcoin. meaning monero is probably not used as much as the others. from what i've read and researched the dev of monero is not an agreeable person, as monero has had many chances to make it big and has turned down all mainstream opportunities which is good for the monero user but not the monero miner.
Which coins do you think are as secure as Monero? Check out the link in my signature.
As for developer (there are over 250 contributors), the lead maintainer only exposed the foolishness of the extreme hype around ICOs and how they're bad for not only investors but moreso for crypto users. Some people didn't like him calling out the foolishness, and maybe he didn't do it in the best way possible, but if you look at the recent crash crypto had, he was right. The sad part is that there will be more ICOs and more crashes and more lost money on crypto that is nothing but air. The right thing to do is to point out foolishness and warn the community. Of course, people are still free to put their money into whatever they want.
