I agree that NEM is going to explode this year. The big reason I don't think you have mentioned here is the upcoming (supposedly this month of August) release of Catapult, a complete overhaul of NEM written in C++ coding language (current version of NEM is Java) which increases transaction speed and scalability. Here is the catapult white paper: https://www.nem.io/catapultwhitepaper.pdf

Not to mention the prior announcement of a $40 million marketing campaign to increase NEM visibility in the west, which is going to begin with the release of Catapult. NEM is big in Japan and it is about to become a rockstar in the west as well :)