On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 1:22 PM, The Doctor <drwho@virtadpt.net> wrote:
Why would somebody trust a centralized entity that interfaces with a decentralized system that deals with something people perceive as valuable? "Hey! I'd rather work with a central point of failure!"
Probably because they don't currently have a choice. ie: afaik, there's no good decentral/p2p fiat-BTC exchange. Localbitcoins might be close in a way... distributed transaction locations in person... but it has a long way to go as far as volume and price sanity in any given area. And there seems to be some rollup of your transaction stats to the site, possibly including your price and volume, which a great many would not care to share. Until the commute to your local btc trader is tolerable, and under your desired level of regulation (or not), the big exchanges will remain the only real way to move nontrivial amounts in/out. That's not a problem for most players, they just want a place to play that looks stable long enough to push their transaction of interest through, or make enough money trading to offset the risk of trading there. On that note, Gox is dead. Any comeback will be a private legal matter between them and their customers/investors. If and after that 170M or so is ever paid off, by that time other fully legitimized and well regulated exchanges will have completely blown past and marginalized Gox (and others tbd) into just an early memory. Look to the US to come onboard with some *very* serious exchanges within the next year. Wall street already sees coins as tradeable, and banks love taking fees, holding stuff for you and pimping it out the backend. It really just comes down to how good Bitcoin (or any given virtual currency) is as a protocol... chain size, TPS, 51%, etc. VC's are pure greenfield and everyone wants a piece, including Govts (even if only by taxation). Gox isn't going to stop that, neither is any other non protocol meltdown or anon horsemen skirting the exchanges... the potential profits are just too big for entites to pass up. Claim your stake today.