It is a complete casino coin, just look at this week. The only competitor at the same level is BNB and they own the casino. Don't get me wrong, profit and whatnot is always good. The point is that you can also do money with Forex. There are reasons beyond the "value goes up" argument to use cryptocurrency. The most important is the root of the word "crypto" which means in latin to keep hidden, private. When it isn't hidden nor private, it is just a casino coin or a virtual coin. But it certainly isn't a cryptocoin on the true sense of the word.

It was some time ago. Basically monero doesn't require graphic cards nor ASIC and anyone with an old computer can mine, so it was being mined in public institutions around Venezuela, and is also used to privately send money from US/Europe to family members there. Basically their economy collapsed and monero is difficult to censure/track by authorities.