I think this may be a little misleading. If you look at both coins over their entire history, you can see they have similar ups and downs in terms of number of transactions per unit time.
No, I really don't see that, especially after enabling 7-day avg on the bitcoin chart. There is no comparison actually. BTC has a steady uptrend and LTC is all boom and bust with major drops offs. BTC rarely if ever drops 50+% while LTC drops 75% repeatedly, including the current drain spiral.
I disagree. In its first two years of existence, bitcoin had two major boom/bust cycles. From July 2011 to January 2012, btc went from over 14k tx/day to about 4.8k (a 65% drop), and from 57k tx/day in July 2012 back down to 17k tx/day at the end of 2012 (a 70% drop).
I do see that the boom bust cycles in ltc tx/day are a bit more pronounced - from 13k down to 2.5k tx/day (an 80% drop) and from 19.5k down to 4k (also about 80% drop) - but I think the amount of competition has to be taken into account as well. By the time litecoin was going into the boom bust cycles it had a lot more competition than btc at its same moment in history, so I think it makes sense that the swings would be a bit more dramatic.
I guess I just don't see a major difference between a 70% drop and an 80% drop, considering the circumstances of litecoin having more alternatives for people to move to (ftc, qrk, etc.) .