If youre only realizing now that Bitcoin is the boss, then youve been misled in the past.
Some people misled people that ethereum one day will increase above bitcoin in marketcap. But they forgot that there are ethereum competitors. As usual, people will leave the old altcoins and move to new altcoins. That is what that happened to ethereum. Ethereum still tried as it did not get really dumped but it is not a store of value just like the other coins.
"This x coin will be the next Bitcoin"... this kind of statement had been the announcement of any new created cryptocurrency in time when I entered the cryptosphere. But almost all those cryptocurrency projects that say that they will be the next Bitcoin are either dead or worthless now. If there is any that has value is still far from the Bitcoin valuation.
Most community leaders or marketing arm of new cryptocurrency project utters such (somehow) non-sense things (the next Bitcoin) because they want to hype the project. The worst is that they are even followed by their loyal community deceiving/misleading naive investors. Aside from that most projects that claim to be the next Bitcoin are somehow tied to collect and run developers (scammers).
I don't understand why so many people see ethereum as a competitor to bitcoin. One has a purpose of utilizing smart contracts and building on it's blockchain through those, where bitcoin was made it was made to be used as a currency. So it kinda drives me a little bonkers when I see it, like on that HBO documentary that came out not too long ago. I couldn't even watch the last like 20mns because of how much bull shit was being spewed out.
People look at them as both cryptocurrencies, regardless of the function, people who do not delve into the functions of the cryptocurrency look at them as the same. Since ETH is second to BTC, most people look at ETH as Bitcoin competitor ignoring the differences in their purposes.