There is a tech and there is a team. The tech may be relatively ok, not worse or not much worse that of the other competitors, but due to the team's lack of work on the tech, regular failure to keep the deadlines, not fulfilling the promises, the community may not believe in the team, and this is represented by the market price of the coin. Now, even during the btc rally, most of the coins show a lot of growth, not only to the btc raise, but raise in relation to the btc as well. When that does not happen to bcn (despite its being paraded as existing from 2012), you do not question the tech, but the team.
Trasparency, regular updates, good communication with the community, clear trasparent answeres about the premine (not some vague round-about comments, which do not hit the point), staying away from the dark markets association, on the part of the team, may help. Otherwise, we'll be hearing for many months and years the moans of the community, how come the bcn does not grow, maybe the enemies are to blame. The btc grows in value despite all "enemies". The good devs do not shift the responsibility or produce lame excuses, or seek out enemies, they'd rather improve their performance and root out their own inadequacies.
I'm absolutely agree that regular updates and good communication with the community is the key to the successful project, and that's the thing we're working on. A lot of things were made during the last 4 months. The premine myth was ruined many times before, however, it's continuing to stay in trend among haters. I'm not trying to complain or something like that, however, I only want to make you notice that there's a huge progress performed by the team during the last months and thats the start point of the new era for Bytecoin.