A significant sell-off in September was driven by China’s regulatory crackdown on exchanges. Litecoin was particularly sensitive to this because it had a large base of Chinese investors.

LTC was widely marketed as the "silver to Bitcoin's gold," offering faster block times (2.5 minutes vs. BTC's 10) and lower fees. 2. Reasons to Buy in October 2017

By late 2017, LTC was already one of the top three payment options on major processors like BitPay . 3. The Counter-Argument (The "Gamble") Latest Litecoin (LTC) News Update - CoinMarketCap

There was growing excitement about the Lightning Network , a layer-2 solution for instant payments, which saw its first successful transaction on Litecoin months before Bitcoin.

Litecoin was the first major coin to activate SegWit in 2017, a major protocol upgrade that optimized block space.