Vitalik is not the only dev on ethereum. There are over 70. Vitalik has created the idea and whitepaper already.
yeah but the market wont care about that, it is all based on FUD, hype and perception. Mike Hearn wasn't even a real core developer and his tantrum dropped bitcoin 20%.
If Vitalik disappears ethereum would crash, there's way too much hype centralising it around one poor kid who's way out of his depth ... it's kind of sad how they are exploiting him.
What's sad is to watch "Bitcoiners" running for the lifes and trying to invent the most ridiculous FUD ever. Vitalik kidnapped? You don't even know who Satoshi is but you trust some unknown "core" developers and chinese miners and call that a decentralized utopia, lol.
Look man, Bitcoin doesn't even have to die because it has proven itself a good way to store wealth, like digital gold. As a payment system it's a complete joke that will never be adopted by anyone, either common persons or serious companies. It had its time and now it's really agonizing. Ethereum is not here to replace Bitcoin actually, because Bitcoin doesn't even have its own position secured, what's the use of it? Nothing. It was a unique and disruptive original idea that gave us the blockchain, the "currency" itself is a complete failure unless it's used as speculation tool (that's perfectly fine for me though...but many are still trying to make Bitcoin "happen", they think they could actually get a woman to use it for example...).