As this topic is essentially about Bitcoin, not altcoins (as the tittle wily but deceivingly suggests), I think it is a correct board to start it in
Many of us are wondering what would happen if crypto vanished altogether (and probably having jitters at such a thought). Well, I'm not that cruel, and only propose to discuss the less evil problem, if a problem at all. That is, will Bitcoin as well as a few selected altcoins (say, a couple or so) benefit from the complete disappearance of the total majority of altcoins from the cryptocurrency arena?
As I'm inclined to think, a few remaining coins would benefit dramatically. My train of thought is as follows. We can plausibly claim that Bitcoin would be far better off now if not for the huge pile of shitcoins that turned out outright scams at the end of the day. People wouldn't have lost their money in these schemes, and they wouldn't lose it if they invested it in Bitcoin instead. Simple and straightforward logic, right?
In the same vein it is natural to assume that the death of the altcoin world would eventually do only good to Bitcoin in the long run as people won't be losing money anymore. So what d'ya think?
I don't think so, no. Bitcoin wouldn't change much with or without the altcoins. The people who currently own altcoins wouldn't necessarily have that in Bitcoin regardless, they could go stocks or whatever. Less altcoins benefiting altcoins? Maybe, but not by much.
In any case its a moot point. Its like those that would want to see a single Linux distribution, or a single desktop environment, or a single web browser: Its never happening. The nature of Free and Open Source software promotes diversity by its very nature, altcoins will continue to exist even if they never achieve success and most will die anyway because there is simply too many of them and many have changed things for the worst (centralization, etc).
Scammers existed before Bitcoin, with bitcoin and with altcoins. Some people lost money in altcoins while not being a scam at all, they simply trusted something that the market deemed worthless.
Bitcoin would not be far better off without the altcoins, it would be, about the same. If there were no altcoins it means it wasn't free and open source and that would lead to a far much worse situation, that thankfully never happened. Closed proprietary software, or security by obscurity is absolute garbage (cryptographers had known that for decades).
Altcoins might wish there were less of them, but that isn't happening either. Nothing stops you from making your own coin, even if its literally just Bitcoin with another name (your own blockchain). That's the beauty of it. Now convincing the market that yours is worth anything, that's a whole other matter... It is like, trying to sell a product in a place with overabundance of said product.