Dark = market leader
Indisputibly so. I consider dark to be shady, however. I sold out of drk and moved to xmr for three primary reasons: (1) CN protocol allows me to actually control the size of my anonymity set, and I have confidence that the set will hold; not so drk. (2) P&D/premine/ponzi factors are beyond my tolerance level in drk. (3) Snake oil crypto claims raise my hackles. I'm just not going to trust my life and treasure to drk' s protocols. Great coin if you love forks, however.
I don't think anyone advocates xmr more strongly than I do. I am taking my own medicine, and I don't want anyone else to get sick either. It definitely benefits me if others adopt XMR, but I strongly believe that it will benefit them as well, as long as they don't own more than they can hold in strong hands.
It isn't the leading coin with privacy claims, in terms of market cap. It isn't the first cryptonote protocol coin. It isn't the most user friendly coin by a nautical mile. But it does have a balance of factors which convince me that it is the leading candidate to supply the net with private liquidity for years to come. In areas where it is weak, it is good enough, and improving. In areas where it is strong, it is distinguished from its competitors by the honesty and frankness of its development team, it's open-source ethos, its fair launch, its methodical, un-hyped progress, in a well-planned and prioritized process, and the size and growth of its hashing infrastructure.
I really do think that slow and steady can win this race. It's already good enough for technically aware people to use, and it won't take long for it to be good enough for anyone who is comfortable with bitcoin today to use it. How long it will take before it is suitable for mainstream use, I dare not venture -- years, I would say, since that is a very high bar of usability (think iPod). But it has all it needs now to get there in due time.
Personally, I'm invested, to some degree or the other, in the whole anonymous market - so I don't have to worry so much about who wins and who doesn't. I'm well hedged so to speak.
There are fundamentals in place that I have analyzed in the DRK thread, with great precision - as to how the situation would evolve in terms of marketcaps and other anon coins that would join the party after DRK... That was ~4 months ago. The context of the discussion was about the need for marketing and promotion of DRK, where I said that the fundamentals of explosive growth in new markets will take care of everything - so no real need for promo/hype/spamming etc.
The general crypto boom is over. Those who saw 8000%+ profits from BTC in < 2 years were the lucky few. Who we be the Levi Strauss of the crypto era - a man who started a small business selling new-fanged denim jeans to the gold miners back in '49. Perhaps you've heard Levi's?
I think cryptos in general have a lot of potential. I mean most people don't even know what Bitcoin is, let alone altcoins. And, if you factor in that around three quarters of the planet live in countries with high inflation rate (not EUR, GBP, USD etc - which of course are inflated too but to a lesser degree), cryptos could be a nice alternative to the national currency - and much more convenient than gold for trade purposes.
DRK looks interesting enough, but whether or not it shoots up and outrageous amount to $20, or even $100 by next year is largely irrelevant,
Darkcoin is providing a second option vs the monopoly of transparency in which other coins are in. This means that if someone wants their crypto deposits / crypto transactions to be more private they'll have to move over to DRK. The transparent market is at 100% right now while the more-private market is at near 0%. In terms of "market growth potential" what will happen should be pretty easy to figure out.
With a market cap of ~8bn (BTC+other alts) to 3mn (DARKcoin), the prospect of capital flowing toward the DRK side is "significant". Even if
one per cent of the "transparent" market moves to the more private market,
we're talking about 80mn USD boost that is there to share for DRK or other anon coins which may follow - and they will not be necessarily mutually exclusive (one could practice transferring money through 2-3 anon coins, implementing different solutions, for extra safety / privacy). Needless to say what may happen if tax authorities start to crack down on BTC. The "just 1%" may suddenly become several % - with a corresponding boost in value of the private coins.
I mean, from a market perspective, and with such prospects being there, even if the anon market is shared by 2-3-5 different coins in the long run, this is a 9-digit to 10-digit market (xxx millions to billions) that they will share between them. Current market cap of a few million USD may seem like a joke by then. With such fundamentals, who needs hype, or pump and dumps?
The same applies today. The market cap of anon coins is nearly identical with my prediction, and it is dominated by DRK (>50%), Bytecoin & clones and Bitcoin-based pumps & dumps or coins that are ...trying. I also predict this 1% will gradually be extended towards the 10% mark - but that will be slower in comparison to the 1% (that should be obvious).
The only piece of the puzzle left, to diversify into, are zero-proof coins - which can come in and claim superiority against mixing practices in Bitcoin & Bytecoin.
I do have some ANCs from the times when DRK and ANC were the only anon coins in existence (zerocash wasn't an option back then), so my hedge of DRK was ANC by necessity. ANC has been very low in price (given the coins in circulation) and has promised zerocash integration in early July... if that hedge also manages to blow up in price, well, ...I'll be damned...
It's funny how you support a coin(Darkcoin) with a 50% instamine by the developers at launch..they didn't even bother making a new coin when they could of to get rid of the instamine because they hold most of that instamine themselves...Plus its masternodes are something that could always be compromised. Most masternodes are hosted on Amazon servers, and they can all be taken down, by DDOS attacks etc etc, thereby abolishing Darkcoin's "anonymity". Not to mention, Darkcoins anonymity stems from coinjoin, which itself is hardly anonymous, see here:
Don't get me wrong, I myself own 210 darkcoin(the most of any crypto I have), but I value it as a pump and dump only, as do most holding Darkcoin right now....it's 50% instamine and coinjoin anonymity based on human backed masternodes is just stupid....no other way to say it.
Even Zerocash's huge trust issue is a better anonymity alternative than Darkcoin.
good news is coming. 
Would you be able to give some examples of that?