There are things that are actually bad that governments have tried to ban and failed. Even if certain regimes try or succeed in banning it in their country, other rival countries will see it as an opportunity. The community really governs crypto currencies, so unless all the devs abandoned their projects it will not die.

I don't even think banks can compete on the technical level, the only way they could right now is to poach the best devs from the crypto community. When giant hardware manufacturers are making mining specific M/B's etc, it shows how much progress has been made.

BTC has been around longer, used unilaterally in crypto and is better known. ETH is newer, has a promising 'leader' and provides a different service to BTC. I think they depend on each other at the moment, however if I had to choose which to buy it would probably be ETH.

Learning about bitcoin mining on GPUs, and the whole concept on sending/storing wealth using bitcoin.

Eth is definitely one of, if not the most stable altcoin. Outside of Eth, the other coins with innovative and useful technology "should" stay relatively stable.

If you are worried you can switch alts to BTC/ETH or even tether until it calms down. IMO it's a good time to buy or just wait and forget.

Great thread, Monero and DeepOnion for me. IMO it's still far too early to determine which will be the best, however the concept of anonymity is second to none.

VEN, LINK, PLR, KIN, and ONION are all interesting projects.