I do not think price of a coin entirely determines its value and significance. There are many coins with good technology and goals, but their value is low. It seems the crypto market is influenced by advertisement. If you extensively advertise anything, bad or good, it will surely catch the attention of the people and become popular.
Most of the projects you see flaunting top on coinmarketcap is not because they can really boast of the quality of their project, they were only able to attract clients through they hype they created, and which is why most holders are holding this coin because of the belief that it will make them a big fortune in future with the continuous hyping of it.
Real projects are not being judged by the value for me, but of the usefulness of the product, if its little clients they can get to keep their projects running, and then fine, provided they have a working product, with time, they will keep increasing in volume. The best projects are not projects that gain fast volume immediately and die off later, but projects that have quality product and even if they get to the top slowly.