Sidechains will require a "hard fork" according to Vitalik. Is that going to be a deal killer? Or is a hard fork no big deal?
I don't see how a hard fork would be a deal killer if by doing this, 500 competing chains and their devs can be turned into supporting chains and devs. If the sidechains with two-way-peg work as advertised and have no other negative impact besides some extra 3kb per block or anything similarly small, it's a no-brainer bitcoin will do the fork.
Litecoin's value proposition isn't really changed by this. It's an alternative blockchain that uses scrypt instead of SHA-256. That's where its small bit of value comes from. Its very very very small bit of value.
It actually was value when we were still uncertain if we would successfully transition to ASIC or if the NSA would do that 1 year before us. Now what exactly is the benefit of srypt mining?