Can an altcoin eclipse it if people's trust in cryptos gets damaged by BTC crashing though? I hope it can hold a decent price anyway.
I think the answer to that is yes, but that it will take time. People lost trust in bitcoin and exchanges after the mt gox incident in early 2014, but bitcoin came back... only it took several years. I think that we could see something similar here where it goes into a lull for a while before any crypto really starts to rise again.