I've always thought that any sufficiently funded team of professionals could blow Bitcoin out of the water in a short period of time. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet to be honest. Probably still too niche.
Blow bitcoin out of the water with what? Pump and dump scams? What else could possibly motivate anyone to run an expensive marketing campaign?
Good question. It would probably be a Google-esque give away, in which the boon is granted in order to create an ecosystem in which a novel business model is profitable. For example, a financier-driven competitor would be similarly open-source (but community-oriented only in the degree required to avoid an immediate fork before the ecosystem was up and running) and be optimized for lending, leverage, and scripting contracts. Ethereum, anyone? They are funded by Goldman-Sachs alumni. Their marketing has been brutal in its consequences for BTC. Since their cronies run the governments in North America and Europe, prosecution for securities law violations seems questionable.
This current Bitcoin downturn started at the same time that there was a minor hysteria regarding the perception that Ethereum was going to be selling their 26000 BTC. Now I'm certainly not claiming this downturn is caused solely by Ethereum, but the perception that they could actually produce a valuable product isn't something that is likely to have a positive effect on the price of Bitcoin.