We are in the very early days of Steem from what I'm seeing and there are a lot of directions it could go.
Steem is definitely unique compared to other cryptos in the way it is inextricably tied to Steemit. It is a coin fueled by creativity rather than the over-heated brute force of GPU mining rigs. For this reason alone, Steem would already have my loyalty but there are so many more :D