In regards to BTC, I believe, at least for now, that BTC is essential as the backbone of the cryptosphere, not only because of the trading pairs but also because of the general sentiment which is important. All the people who want BTC to fail at this moment are delusional thinking that their alt coin of choice would increase in value. Mainstream sentiment would be destroyed.
I completely agree. But I don't think anyone is saying they want btc to fail. Just that they think it will. Very different thing. And sentiment will recover in time. This whole sector is probably going to behave a lot like the dotcoms. It's wildly overbought because people are excited about technology that is indeed revolutionary just like people overbought tech stocks because the internet was so revolutionary. But the amazons and apples are already here, they will survive the correction and be MUCH bigger after just like amazon and apple are now after the dotcom crash. Also if i'm right and we are going to see our own dotcom crash and recovery, a recovery with bitcoin leading the charge will be a more centralized world than one without. It could be better in the long long run for bitcoin to actually die. For decentralization's sake.