All that Litecoin is showing is how its still used as a vehicle for pumpers and ponzi-scheming ripoff artists. Oh, and its useful for laundering stolen BTC as well. As far as the 'simple fix' for spam - its called "raising your mining fee."
When sidechains become a reality, alt-coins like LTC will revert to their mean value of 0.
or Litecoin will have Sidechains too
The knock-on effect you aren't mentioning is that any alt-coin that has its own token will become valueless. You'll have to transfer back into the BTC market to use sidechains, which means sure, Litecoin can still exist, but there won't be any stand-alone LTC. The market exodus should be very entertaining to watch.
