Look at all these numerous Bitcoin forks - they provide almost nothing over BTC while have far less security. You could argue that Litecoin has half confirmation time comparing to BTC, but it means nothing when thinking about waiting 5 minutes instead of 10 in grocery store's queue.
Only one cryptocurrency that offer something unique is Namecoin IMHO. It has real potential to explode when major browsers (Firefox and Chrome) will add .bit domains support. Just think about casinos, poker rooms, online pharmacies, torrent trackers and many other "rogue" industries that currently annoyed with domain seizures and will be really appreciated with government-independent domain system.
I think you got it wrong as to why this coin is exploding in price. It has nothing to with the domain name capability.
It however has everything to do with its massive hash rate.
If I were to store wealth, would I trust it on a network with intermitent network support?
I want a guarantee that the network will have a massively high hash rate and will exists forever.
That is why NMC is up big time.
