I feel that vitalik created blockchain 2.0, which should be regarded as a milestone in the currency circle. In the world of blockchain, his contribution is second after Satoshi Nakamoto.
On this developments, I believed that ethereum would remain the strongest following cryptocurrency of bitcoin and despite of its transaction fee issues I guess people just ignored it due to the bigger potential that eth would be second possible future btc. The value it has right now was the path where btc also was seen raging over until such time it became established of current profitable value.