Joke aside, when the Founder left and sold his coins that was it in my opinion. Trust was broken[...]
I've quite the opposing view, even if I'm more a "Bitcoiner" than a "Litecoiner": when Charlie Lee sold his coins, I began to take LTC more seriously. Exactly because of the trust issue - in a cryptocurrency there should be never a single person you have to "trust".
Bitcoin has still the problem that nobody knows what will happen with Satoshi's coins. Many are worried about that - I'm not so much, because anyway if they're sold that will send down the price only for the short term, on the long term it should be strengthened. But anyway, LTC has already survived this stage - this can be seen as an advantage.