[neomindryan]

All of this was arguably true two weeks ago.

Today, Litecoin has locked in support for Segwit, and in about a week it will be possible to create Lightning Network transactions using Litecoin.

This is largely due to the efforts of the creator, Charlie Lee, who was able to build consensus among the community to activate Segwit.

Contrast this with the inability of the Bitcoin Community over the last few years to get any improvements added.

You may think this is a bad thing because Litecoin has a more centralized authority governing it, or you may think it's a good thing because Litecoin has a way to improve itself, but either way I'd argue Litecoin has very recently become more than what you described.

[h1d]

This. As the price indicated, it was 1/10 the value of itself from the Chinese bubble while Bitcoin has reached all time high now until it realized its use as a good real world test of the Bitcoin's newer features when Bitcoin struggled to apply those due to political and financial conflict within the community but Litecoin went ahead being a much smaller community and is the first to have it activated.

Being almost identical to Bitcoin actually increased its value as its results can be a good indication for Bitcoin as well.

As a cryptocurrency, it's pretty much of no use but as a real world play ground for newer features for Bitcoin, it's pretty optimal and it just proved it has a room to stay than being irrelevant.

[Kinnard]

Well, if it's useful for all those reasons, and it can be traded for a useful cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ether and now USD and to do everything a cryptocurrency can do then its useful . . . right?

You basically just said it's Bitcoin's more progressive, more nimble cousin.