It's hard to argue with your final conclusion about the long term prospects. My short term theory is that we have a big five trading group. With bitcoin being the first to cross a major threshold in term of becoming available to institutional buyers. i.e. Whether the market goes up or down LTC, XRP, ETH, BTC, BCH are going to trade at some ratio to one another and in some order. The unknown is which one/s will be the next to cross the threshold to futures trading. That will be a catalyst for the group each time it happens.