Or any other alt coin for that matter? I'm wondering if and how it would damage/tarnish Bitcoin's reputation as the Gold standard of all cryptos. I believe it may also affect how institutions view bitcoin, and it may even affect the idea of digital scarcity. No longer can we assume that bitcoin (or its usurper) will remain #1 forever, so how can you imagine it as a safe long term store of value or preserver of wealth? Is the idea of true digital scarcity threatened if bitcoin loses it's #1 rank?
For example, I imagine it would be like silver flipping gold's market cap, (which is practically unthinkable) however, this event would forever alter how gold is perceived, especially by new potential investors.
Gold and silver are both precious metals, they have their different qualities which can be seen and felt, and because of this, their prices can never be the same.
But for cryptocurrencies, the case is quite different, bitcoin and Ethereum are both digital currencies built on written codes, there's no way to tell which code is more quality, and this is why what mainly drives crypto prices is demand and supply, if in the future, Ethereum's demand becomes much more higher than bitcoin's demand causing Ethereum to flip bitcoin in ranking, I don't see this as any thing to really worry about, there was never a time bitcoin was gold, people named it digital gold cus of how valuable it became.