Relating this to cryptocurrency, if BTC who is the mother of Cryptocurrencies and who has gained extensive trust ceases to exist today, will altcoins flourish or will it make the people loose total interest in cryptocurrency.
I personally think that we have so many good crypto projects out there now that even if Bitcoin should fail for whatever reason (flaw in the code if that is possible or some other kind of hack or 51% attack or whatever) those projects could still thrive or maybe even grow, but i don't really think that this would happen. Just imagine Bitcoin suddenly "dies" with it's price going to 0 pretty fast, that would mean that 615B$ would be pretty much gone in an instant and i am pretty sure that those people that lost everything because of bitcoin would use their cash savings ever again to invest into any form of cryptocurrency even if they have nothing to do with bitcoin.