I dont think this is necessarily true anymore..
I know this is a small sample but just from personal experience, lot of my friends got into crypto only a month or two ago and due to the FOMO going around, they are already invested into a diversity of alt coins even if they dont know or care about its whitepaper/tech behind the coin. However, they all started by going through coinbase and after a couple transactions and high fees later, they all became "experts" on ltc and ethereum.

I guess my point is, majority of noobs come through coinbase and coinbase already has ether/usd, bitCASH/usd, and ltc/usd. Noobs might not necessarily know the tech behind all these coins, but they certainly do know the names litecoin and ethereum. So I also wonder if the altcoin crash would really lead to a migration towards ltc...ether...or maybe even but hope to the crypto gods not...bitCASH!?!