LTC can't be no silver as to BTC is gold when it is too costly to invest into compared to total coins that will ever be available (4x that of BTC's Total Coin Cap)
LiteCoin was created to be the younger brother or sister if you may want to call it of the Major Leader at the time and that is what it has been ever since.
If LiteCoin is now the testing playground for Bitcoin ideas then the roles might be reversed but hey if 1 man (Charlie Lee) is the face of LTC like how the invisible Satoshi was to Bitcoin before The Core Devs came then It could have a future use chance.
Everyone knows Bitcoin is expensive even more in this moving era and people want a cheaper everyday use alternative that offers almost identical features.
Remember LiteCoin is a true Legacy coin that has survived the thousands of altcoins that have been created over the periods of time since altcoins were starting to become popular as a cheaper alternative means before they started to just get silly.
Take a look at DogeCoin, pretty much the same old first popular fun coin that holds so little value individually but has a following due to its simplicity and target audience, personally I think of DOGE as a donation currency for causes instead of a market leader due to what it is about.
LTC is meant to be my schrappers to my BTC notes