is Litecoin a dark horse?

If you take a look at the capitalization on this site https://coinmarketcap.com it may seems that Ethereum is the main rival of Bitcoin. But this may not be the case.

The thing is, Bitcoin was originally developed as a means of payment, whilst Ethereum is a multi functional platform that can work as a cryptocurrency for its internal payments.

Lightcoin was created in 2011 by Charlie Lee. He is a public and famous person, no secrets and mysteries. Lightcoin is based on the same open source code as Bitcoin, but with some technological differences.

What has Litecoin been doing since 2011? Actually nothing special. His creator has recently begun to pay attention to his offspring. The price of cryptocurrency was "stable" for many years - $3 - $4. But it's storming $150 so far. The charge of the currency has grown more than 35 times since the beginning of the year.

Lightcoin is ahead of Bitcoin in the development and adoption of various technical improvements. Developers had long implemented SegWit and the network's speed is much higher than Bitcoin's one. A transaction worth 10-15 cents.

Charlie Lee has recently tested a new atomic transactions technology. The one allows users directly exchange cryptocurrencies between different blockchains. You can change Bitcoin to Litecoin and vice versa.

Litecoin developers don't consider Litecoin as a rival of Bitcoin. They believe the cryptocurrencies can exist in parallel, and the first one will focus only on payments in addition to Bitcoin.

A few days ago, the leader of the Litecoin announced that his team is beginning a serious marketing promotion of its cryptocurrency.

I suppose Litecoin really has got a future. But the project needs to develop aggressively, rivals are actively pressed.