You can't have a creation like BTC within a free market without expecting some guys creating similar alternatives to it. Right now it's hard to say how even bitcoin will establish. I think it's great to have something like litecoin. Alternatives are always a good thing. Of course they depend at some point of bitcoins success. LTC has a few advantages over BTC even if it's still very similar. We will see how these advantages will work out in the future. Of course people can make/loose huge short-term profit with it and so a lot of speculators will sooner or later jump on it too. Bitcoin is still in it's early days and litecoin even more. The fluctuation isn't a bad thing at all and may stabilize over time with market growth. Therefore is also a long-term success chance for litecoin. For me there is no reason why LTC shouldn't exist besides BTC. Does it take any potential value from BTC? According to the value in USD, yes. But that doesn't mean these two can't coexist without hurting each other. You don't blame silver that it makes your gold less valuable than it could be without. If people see reasons to convert some/all of their BTC into LTC then it shall be that way.

I'm looking forward to this and think both of em will have their usage(s).