When Bitcoin was starting to gain traction, people started to know about it and it was becoming popular, news outlets and global media tried their best to make it look negative so that people stop adopting and using it, but guess what? They failed miserably, and all that is still happening on a larger scale and every single entity or individual trying to defame Bitcoin and show it in a bad light is seeing no positive result.
The truth is, Bitcoin is passed all those things and it has now become way stronger than they think, so they can't break it anymore.
Up until now, no alt can surpass the popularity of bitcoin among its crypto users. And I don't think ripple has the chance to overcome bitcoin's usage of popularity. In terms of adoption, many people will still opt for btc even for long-time holding.
The issue of XRP with SEC creates hesitation to crypto users not to get involved with this project.