[sillysaurus2]

Agreed. How could Gox imploding result in a better bitcoin world? I'd lose a ton of money, so my little world would be directly worsened. The price of bitcoin is now about $500, but it likely would've stayed >$650. And now people will forever use this as an example of why bitcoin is dangerous: financial unregulation is dangerous.

It will be just another page in history, yes, but it's a painful one. Personally I still believe Gox will ultimately be okay since everything still has a logical explanation, but hypothetically it seems hard to believe that Gox self-destructing would be anything but bad news.

[pmorici]

Scams happen even in supposedly highly regulated financial companies you only need to look as far as Bernie Madoff and Jon Corzie's MF Global this doesn't really have much to do with regulation.

[stinkytaco]

I think the argument is that there's nothing to stop this from happening all the time and maybe even perpetrated by the same people. Yes, scams happen, but there are repercussions and sometimes preventative measures even work. The Mt. Gox soap opera is not something that would occur in a regulated baking environment (at least in the US environment), but in bitcoin it's been dragged out for months (since it became a target of the US Government). It's bad publicity if nothing else.

I believe in bitcoin and its long term potential, but there is no question that lack of regulated exchanges will stunt its long term acceptance.

[workhere-io]

It's not a question of whether scams happen - it's a question of how many scams happen and how severe they are.