do you really think that in the hypothetical situation of a major bitcoin crash litecoin will still stand?
i think this highly unlikely. imho all the altcoins derive their value from the faith of people in bitcoin and by association in crypto currencies. the big one fails, all of them fail.
No. The point of some of the alt currencies is to address perceived weaknesses in bitcoin, like deflation, or wasted energy in mining for example. Bitcoin created a market but that market will outlive bitcoin if it fails. Now litecoin is basically a clone so it'll fall with bitcoin, there's nothing interesting about it, but others like peercoin or primecoin are substantially different in ways that may matter greatly.
The VC's are looking to invest in people selling shovels, not panning for gold/speculating on price. They've built cryptocurrencies' naturally high volatility into their expectations, and are looking for ROI on service fees.
