For bitcoin maximalists, the rest of the crypto industry is trash and worthless except for bitcoin, so you shouldn't be surprised that there are some people who think so.

I agree that ETH or any altcoin will never be able to compete with bitcoin, bitcoin will always be the king and dominate the crypto industry. But no matter what people say about eth or altcoins with utility, usecase...they still exist and develop over time. Many people also made claims that ETH would soon die or disappear from the early days of its creation but the interesting thing is that it has been around since 2013 and has also grown millions of times. Just because it doesn't perform well and doesn't generate good returns this cycle doesn't mean it's not useful or will die.

The cryptocurrency industry is still very young and there is still a lot to develop and explore, so let's not rush to assert or declare anything when we are not the ones who decide the future of the industry.

Admittedly, many years ago (2017 and earlier) there were some altcoins that boldly claimed that they would beat and replace bitcoin...But since 2017, almost the entire crypto market has recognized Bitcoin as the king and no one dares to challenge that they will surpass or become the Bitcoin killer. But it is puzzling that there are still some investors who like to compare bitcoin with altcoins and reaffirm what everyone knows and no one denies.

It's because of the game theory associated to premined coins. I already touched the topic a bit in this post.

If a coin has a large premine like ETH, this puts a "company" (or, in Howey Test vocabulary, a "common enterprise") in the center of the whole coin's economy. This "company" (which doesn't have to be registered as such!) is the team of developers, founders, early bird investors and ecosystem partners who benefit directly from the premine, either because they got allocated coins or because they received fiat (or other cryptocurrencies) selling premined coins to ICO investors.

There are particularly two centralization risks associated with that model.

First, as investors have suffered a dilution due to the premine, they expect the "company" to deliver work - development, marketing, and also a certain "spiritual leadership" (like in the case of Buterin himself) to make the coin flourish and increase its price. If the company ceases to deliver that, the coin will very likely suffer problems (it won't die instantly, but probably lose a lot of value). In such cases it is very difficult that the community "takes over" development of a premined coin. Why should you "work" for the coin's success if you haven't been benefitted by the premine?

This problem leads to a situation where the "company" always takes the main decisions regarding the protocol. They can involve the community but someone of the "company" will often have the last word. The community depends on the company's success.

Second, the "company" often holds lots of coins during extended times. These coins can be used to pressure for some (forking) protocol changes. In the case of Ethereum, the most egregious case was the ETH/ETC split. Buterin threatened to sell coins of the fork not supporting his changes, and thus he achieved consensus for the protocol changes which froze the TheDAO hacker's funds (a case of blockchain censorship, even if the hack was obviously malicious, but blockchains should be neutral).

There are probably more centralization risks but these are the main ones which prevent me to trust premined coins like Ethereum in contrast to decentralized, non-premined coins like Bitcoin. I always associate these coins with a "company" which is close to a single point of failure or "middleman" because they have more power than any other entity in the power game of the coin.

In Bitcoin, instead, we have an equilibrium between miners, hodlers and other "economic nodes", developers and "opinion leaders", which changes with time and prevents anybody concentrating too much power.

We can't compare bitcoin and other altcoins in the same way that we can compare gold and silver because at the end of the day, these things are clearly not interchangeable.

Bitcoin and other altcoins are so far apart in comparison that in the end we can't even compare things that are not comparable so why force it. Discussions like this have happened so much that maybe every year there is always a discussion like this but in every discussion we always have the same belief that bitcoin will never be compared with altcoins because in the end it will be very funny if the king is compared to those who follow them.
Currently the nature of altcoins of course we are aware that their development sometimes always refers to the price that bitcoin has so in the end what to compare things that are difficult or even cannot be compared because the conclusion will still end the same where bitcoin is the king.

To be honest, there are other cryptocurrencies that are making a good performance in the market. It’s just that bitcoin still dominate them, although they could have an edge in some aspects. But all in all, bitcoin is on top of them that’s why it’s the lifeblood of the crypto market.

However, comparing cryptocurrencies from tangible assets is wrong. They have their own benefits from different aspects. But we can start acquiring slowly all of them if we want, that is to gain more security and assurance when retirement comes.

They 've built a lot of L2 (and L3) solutions on top of L1 Ethereum.
For instance, they have Arbitrum as L2, on which the TXs are faster and cheaper (almost free of charge).

It saddens me that with Bitcoin, we haven't been able to produce reliable and convenient L2 solutions. Lightning hasn't acquired the necessary traction, perhaps for fair reasons, but I think a good L2 solution is more important than ever, if we want to view bitcoin as a currency and not as savings mechanism.

Not really sure if you are already in crypto that time, but you would understand where those thoughts came from. As far as I can remember, it was a bear market and obviously, the price of Bitcoin is going down. And then suddenly, Ethereum goes up and so with XRP and as far as the price close, they almost hit the top price of Bitcoin. But in any case, we all know that won't happen and moving forward, everyone was glad that it didn't.

And it just proved how resilient and robust Bitcoin, even if challenge, it proved itself why it is the the number one crypto in the market. So I doubt that there will be a time again that Ethereum will have such argument against Bitcoin.