Being what Bitcoin was supposed to be. Minimal transaction fees, maximum privacy, no need for extra layers. It's certainly used far less often for small-scale,

Being what Bitcoin was supposed to be. Minimal transaction fees, maximum privacy, no need for extra layers. It's certainly used far less often for small-scale, personal transactions. Businesses mostly don't support it yet. I'm hoping that will change. The only company I do business with that supports Monero is Mullvad, and that was only a recent addition. The media is certainly doing a good job of pinning the "Monero = bad guy naughty money" connotation to it. That connotation means it's doing its job though. If organized crime thinks it's secure and private enough, then it's definitely good enough for me. I honestly can't answer the speculative asset usage part with any empirical evidence, but it seems to be used speculatively no where near as much as Bitcoin and Ethereum. I don't see crypto hype-guys chanting "MO-NER-O!" at all really in comparison to the other two.