2. In Litecoin's case: its activation of Segwit may attract BTC core and other BTC enthusiasts.
3. Ethereum's recovery from DAO hack. I personally think the swift hard fork in this scenario was a great call, and it really convinced me of the leadership at the Ethereum Foundation.
4. Second generation proof-of-stake systems are increasingly looking like they'll work. A movement away from proof-of-work as a consensus algorithm I find crucial to the long term success of any cryptocurrency.
5. BTC ETF (and Ethereum ETF certainly also going to be denied by the SEC) application and the Winklevii garnered cryptocurrencies a lot of attention.
Overall, I think people are finally metaphorically grasping the concepts around cryptocurrencies. As a result of this, several currencies are coming out that are rapidly outpacing BTC in innovation, especially Ethereum.
They have nefariously manipulated media communications for years to fool people into only accepting a soft fork because they've convinced people a soft fork is somehow safer and any hard fork is automatically contentious. As long as a hard fork is never initiated, they retain write access to the github repo and therefore maintain control of the "default" Bitcoin client. And as long as Greg Maxwell is in charge, he can continue to receive funding for his startup (blockstream).
But yea, crippling layer 1 intentionally and misleading people for their own benefit is incredibly fucked up.
Many of the other alts have most of their volume on the exchange Poloniex which claims to be US based but offers no transparency on their operations. They offer margin trading. The fincen registration number listed on their terms page is not valid. The office address listed is for a corporation registration company in Delaware.
IMO the whole thing is a powder keg. At least it's exciting to watch.
The current thing driving it might be a combination of factors, among which is the North Korea situation with chinese investors moving funds into cryptcurrencies?
1. Chinese investors see crypto as a way of moving currency outside of China. The Chinese government has recently cracked down on movement of money outside of the country.
2. The rise of populism could drive people into crypto. The rise of actors like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders (although defeated) implies major currency instability, especially around USD, EUR.
On (2), from what I understand Gold has become less of a good hedge against world economic stability as well.
Not to mention that every single one is an experiment that feeds back into the collective knowledge of what makes a good cryptocurrency, even as any individual one can only choose a single set of all the known tradeoffs.