Most coins seemed to be developed by scammers or people with sketchy computer science skills. NEM is developed by professional software engineers and people with PhDs in computer science from the world's top universities.
Typical coin devs = one or two guys in a pump and manipulation, quick copy and paste with a new logo, not a lot of creativity or skills. After the coin disappears, they do it again. It is the same few teams over and over responsible for this massive flux of alt coins that weren't designed for anything except for an easy buck for the devs.
NEM devs = talented, focused, creative, and many.
If a person looks closely it is pretty easy to see how NEM's pattern is totally different.
The pump and dumps are announced out of nowhere. NEM was announced a long long time ago.
Pump and dumps don't even have a client on arrival. This is because they are rushed and to some extent if it is a PoW they want to mine it all themselves so they make it hard for others to mine. And NEM not only has a great client but is releasing with extra features.
Pump and dumps just tell the community what is up. NEM actually takes polls and listens to feedback.
Pump and dump devs are quite mysterious (because if people say their real identity they would know they are scammers). The NEM devs all have a history that predates NEM.
The list goes on from there but these are some main points.
We are watching the birth of a real crypto here. One with legs.