Yeah I agree there. I'm long Gridcoin and have been for a while because of what you stated... it's in use and being used for some great research projects.

Beyond that, and along the same lines, speculation is rampant within the ICO space, which are a series of promises based on whitepapers.

Still, I don't get the bullish appeal of ETC specifically, because it's not doing anything new. It's competing in the same space as ETH, because it is essentially the same coin, but without any real use cases that I can tell.