In high school when you saw the "cool kids" group, it was almost always clear which kid was the alpha. Some of the others in the group might dress like the alpha, try to sound like the alpha and even get into the same activities as the alpha-but they never really did it as well.
Well, my friends, respectfully, that is what I think of litecoin. Litecoin is, and admits to being, "bitcoin light". The inferiority complex is hard-wired into litecoin, which even trumpets the slogan of being the " silver to bitcoin's gold".
Litecoin, when standing in the cool kids group at the school, looks pretty good next to bitcoin, and maybe the proverbial cheerleader says he looks pretty good, even if he isn't "big buff bitcoin" .
However, the big problem for litecoin is that the crypto-market party is expanding...fast...and there are all kinds of new cool kids for the cheerleaders to choose from. Suddenly it becomes more noticeable that litecoin's clothes don't fit quite as well as bitcoin's, and it's faults become more pronounced.
Litecoin operates on the same principles and system as bitcoin: no current smart contract capability (although rootstock is coming), problems with scalability and governance, sub-standard privacy compared with other coins, high costs and power to mine etc. The bitcoin network is the older, clunkier blockchain when compared against many of the newer "swiss army knife" entrants that provide much more capability and feature sets.
Although bitcoin shares those faults with litecoin, bitcoin's network effect and first mover advantage has usually been enough for the market to swoon and post bitcoin posters on the inside of their lockers (to continue the high school analogy). But litecoin doesn't have that market penetration and it's use case becomes less and less attractive as other coins like NEO, EOS, Tezos, and bitcoin cash itself pick up steam.
I have sold all of my litecoin and I think that it will slowly slip into irrelevance over the years unless it does something to differentiate itself. Simply being the slightly shorter "guy standing next to bitcoin" will not be enough.
