Don't forget what btc has but nobody else has: the brand, the first one, the recognition, and thanks to that, it is accepted in places. LTC isn't accepted anywhere and neither does it have any technological features to back it up, therefore people may follow fomo to about 1billion perhaps, but then i don't see why would whales pump it at a loss, don't forget there are some really hungry bagholders in ltc.
Fundamental economics trumps marketing.
When Blockstream decides they have to switch to Litecoin, then everything will flow quite quickly. An activation of SegWit on Litecoin and a continued stalemate on Bitcoin with Ethereum releasing LN clone (Raiden) will light a fire under Blockstream's collective butts. I read some Core devs had already signaled working with Litecoin. Litecoin has been running stably for 6 years. Bugcoin Unlimited seems to have a bug every other week lately.
The Chinese are the boss now. This is the new reality in the world.
Who is losing by raising the LTC price? Any whales who buy in now and ride the revaluation upwards of Litecoin to its correct market value, will be increasing their BTC when they trade back at $50, because Bitcoin will probably only double during the same time period. Of course LTC will be more volatile.
There is enough liquidity in LTC and that is the main factor. When LTC had its first spike, it was because LTC was the only coin (with sufficient liquidity) for the BTC whales to lockin their profits when Bitcoin exceeded $1000 for the first time, without exiting to fiat.
There are only 4 projects in top 15 that aim to become currencies, excepting bitcoin and tether. All of them are in the same position as LTC, they are alts but they have either some nice feature like anonymity or they incentivise bagholding via masternodes. I really don't believe LTC can start the kind of fomo even dash can have. If they do that, they will lose alot of money.
Fundamental economics trumps marketing.
Bitcoiners decide. If Bitcoin can't scale, they have to choose something. And they sure aren't going to endorse Dash nor Ethereum. Since they can't have scaling directly on Bitcoin, they will have to choose the next best option which is Litecoin (and probably change the currency unit to "ecoin" which is the latter part of the Litecoin name). And "ecoin" is a better token name for the masses than "bitcoin".
Bitcoiners have to come to the realization that Ethereum is going to release Raiden soon and Bitcoin is never going to get LN nor bigger blocks. No protocol changes will be possible in Bitcoin. So Bitcoiners are going to have to move into Litecoin to raise the price so that miners will buy up A4s like crazy and signal SegWit. It is symbiotic effect and both parties need each to act.
Ethereum is an investment for those who believe killer apps other than just payment systems and value transfer (e.g. finance), are going to very important. Those investing Ethereum aren't doing so just for Raiden. They are investing because Ethereum has the chance of finding other killer apps for blockchains given all the smart app experimentation going on by many different groups decentralized.
Yet Bitcoiners want first and foremost a stable, secure value store and transfer blockchain that can scale. Then they want to add some other things such as those Blockstream is working such as anonymity, Rootstock smart contracts, etc.. Blockstream will not be able to move as fast as Ethereum though. Yet Bitcoiners prioritize stability, focus, and security.
And what else can they choose? The other altcoin shitcoins have no chance at all of being the chosen one. Monero has a little bit of relevance also, but I think their model of volunteer development will be far too slow to compete effectively.
Nobody would rush to accept ltc as payment even if it somehow managed to surpass bitcoin, not having any usage is it's real problem (it wasn't for bitcoin before 2014-2015 because it was a novelty either way).
Fundamental economics trumps marketing.
You'll be surprised how fast Bitpay can add a Litecoin payment option which instantly integrates given that merchants get paid in fiat.
Also Lightning Networks is about banks creating ecoins out of thin air (private fractional reserve) and loaning them to the masses. So the traditional (or modern replacements of) banks are the ones who are going to drive massive adoption. This is a critically important point.Regarding Ripple, I'll defer to the largest Bitcoin whale's analysis:
What I mean is that Ripple is broken in the sense of severe congenital defects, the sort that cause abortion before gestation could in any way conceivably complete. Specifically :
Fatal congenital defect #1. Ripple requires any participant to trust other participants blindly. This is to say, if you trust X person to Y sum this doesn't mean that your trust is rescinded should X issue more than Y worth of debt. It simply means X may issue an infinite volume of debt and you unconditionally promise to accept Y of that. Just like that.
Fatal congenital defect #2. If #1 above somehow didn't kill the thing (for argument's sake), there's absolutely no way for you to receive compensation for the liquidity you provide. Conceivably no matter who X is, be it Russ Meyer or the very Bank of England in its heyday, as long as you take on its debt you're entitled to some sort of compensation for this. At least that's how things work in sane land, since forever. Not in Ripple, however. Your trust is unremunerated, which makes Ripple the only repo market in the history of finance working on 0% interest rates. Not even the FED pumping liquidity through the special bank windows did something like this.
Fatal congenital defect #3. If #1 and #2 above somehow didn't kill it (veering beyond the absurd by now), Ripple averages out all debt. You beg my pardon ? Good for you.
So, suppose Ripple was being used by Ben Bernanke, Christine Lagarde and Lou Jiwei, alongside a number of people randomly picked off the street. You'd sanely expect to be able to buy either BBdollars or Anondollars, separately, as distinct items. Right ? And then CLeuros and LJyuans as opposed to RandomChinesePersonIOU.
Well... that's not how Ripple works. As long as you trust both Lou Jiwei and some random Chinese dude, any people who trust the random dude and hold LJ's yuans can exchange LJ's yuans for any random dude's yuans that you hold.ii Or, as the case may be, the other way around. Always, always the other way around. So what happens when you find yourself trying to pay for a cab ride with what you thought were actual dollars but upon examination turn out to be pieces of paper with "DELLOR" scribbled in pink marker arcoss one side ? Awww, I guess you shouldn't have trusted your boss because he decided to trust his 5 year old daughter and now lookyiii. You've got a blue eye and the cab driver looks just about ready to give you another one.
Basically this boneheaded "everything's a Ripple" approach opens the entire space to the problem that lemon laws try to solve. Let's revisit that for a second, for the benefit of the completely clueless idiots who think it's their place to "create" and "innovate" retarded shit like thisiv.
So, inasmuch as used cars go, it is expensive for buyers to find the actual value of the item. Thus on any specified item buyers make offers based on a guess as to what the average value of a used car would be at any given time. Sellers either know this or soon find out (by being lowballed on good used cars) and soon enough only introduce into the market cars that are objectively worth less than the perceived average. This over time lowers the average, lowering the buyer expectation (and thus price offered) which further lowers the seller incentive and soon enough the only used cars you can buy are refurbished lawnmowers.
This is the problem that lemon laws try to solve. They fail.
So does Ripple. RIPv.
), is private fractional reserve banking via centralized hubs with Lightning Networks. And to realize this will 
as if they don't know why a slow sell to get most profit means!