The thing is, it comes down to Litecoins liquidity...it's available EVERYWHERE, and many websites accept it or deal with it.
Websites dealing with cryptocurrency and payments, Casino's and exchanges, money changers and game sites, just a name a few,
almost always accept Litecoin.
It was one of the first, so people know it. If people know about bitcoin, and you ask them "do you know any about other cryptocurrencies", they will name Litecoin. That word of mouth is worth a lot. Let's not fool ourselves here, if we go to some website that accepts crypto Litecoin is nearly always one of the first things that is "accepted here"...how common is that? Very common. That's liquidity.
Liquidity triumphs these minor innovations we are seeing. What innovations has gold or silver came up with over the centuries of use??? Not many, but it's accepted everywhere because people KNOW it.
If I go to a website and they say we accept Bitcoin, how often does it say "Also we accept Monero, Vanilla, Maidsafe or BTS...Ripple?" come on now get serious. It will invariably say that they accept BITCOIN, LITECOIN, and sometimes DOGE (which is much more like copper to litecoins Silver standard and Bitcoins Gold standard) though I don't think very highly of Doge.
The thing is, I only "got into" crypto 4 or 5 months ago. I tried to learn as much as I could as quickly as possibly, naturally.
One of the things I noticed as a crypto novice was how many websites talked about litecoin, accepted/transacted litecoin deposits, and
I learned that it was something important. Liquidity and mass acceptance or collective understanding is extremely important in marketing and capitalism. Some people don't like to accept that fact but it's a massive part of why litecoin is so popular and is here to stay. It will continue to develop and grow in technology and adoption, and price.
Finally considering that Litecoin is marketed as the Silver to Bitcoins Gold, if we realize that the historical gold/silver ratio was 15/1 Litecoin would have a true value of just under $20 USD per coin at current BTC prices. If we go by the average ratio in the 20th century, the ratio was closer to 47/1 which would still put Litecoin at about $6.40 today, which means it is currently slightly undervalued, and is due for correction very soon. Also note that
silver has always been much more volatile then gold, and so smart investors may like to diversify their portfolios based on this fact and the guarantee of a coin that moves a lot, but is ultimately hedged on the value of bitcoin. If we look at history of the two coins this analysis is correct.
Finally, one more thing to think about with Litecoin is that
capitalism demands competition. Coca-cola has Pepsi, Mcdonalds has Burger King, Japanese cars like Toyota compete with American cars like Ford (though I prefer Asian cars!), IBM and Macintosh and so on. Historically we just need to look at great products to realize that Bitcoin will need some major competitor at some point, it cannot stay number one forever with no one to challenge it, that's not the way economics works.
Could we see Litecoin eventually fight for second place or higher? Dash, Monero, Ripple, Bts, Etherium?
Bitcoins monopoly in crypto demands that it WILL some competition,
that we can just look at history to realize.
Who will it be? Litecoin could very well be it, or at least on of the front runners. Again, liquidity and mass early adoption/understanding in the collective minds of users the world over is going to be a big factor; litecoin was one of the first major projects and this will always continue to help foster it's growth. It's here to stay and will continue to get more and more powerful. Mark my words.
The big pump in early July was a good example of it's world wide potential for overnight growth,
the halving is going to make doubters reconsider!!