Even Litecoin is a joke.
Litecoin keeps us GPU miners going, don't diss Litecoin.
Before you say, why not buy an ASIC. I have an asicminer blade. I have had it 3 months and it still has not mined back the bitcoins I spent on it. Yea the value of the bitcoins I mined went up, but so wouldthe bitcoins I spent had I kept them.
There HAS to be an alternate to bitcoin over time or bitcoin itself cannot survive. Businesses and governments cannot and will not be locked to a sole technology in perpetuity. There always has to be a second and third alternative. Go back in time and you'll discover that one of the first investments that Steven Jobs secured in Apple after he resumed the CEO job was an 80 million dollar infusion from BILL GATES. Why would Gates do such a thing? Because at that point, Microsoft was actually to the point of realistically owning the OS market totally. MICROSOFT needed Apple to not die and ultimately Linux or they would have been broken up by the Feds.
Right now, the alternate to Bitcoin is basically fiat currency or physical gold as 'token of wealth' and Bitcoin's competitor as a transfer medium is paypal, visa, MC, and western union. I would argue that, over time, SOME other crypto currency will have to exist.
Bitcoin is the 'Survivor/Big Brother' of Reality TV. One of the first broadly accepted forms. The other altcoins are just vying for a share of the stage. Most suck and will die. Some will become hits and people will do well.