If someone stole 5% of all the world's fiat currency from an unregulated, uninsured financial institution (Which in that sense was no different from any other BTC exchange... So it's not like anyone had better options.) with customers not getting any recourse, that would be a disaster for fiat currencies.

At least, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the Wild West style of regulating fiat currencies.

People hold BTC businesses to a higher standard because after your BTC is stolen by 'hackers' in an ex-Soviet republic, you have absolutely zero recourse. They hold BTC to a higher standard because no individual in the fiat world siphoned off a trillion dollars into his accounts last year. They hold BTC to a higher standard because the companies operating in the space absolutely refuse to properly protect their customers.

Have a look at secure investment, they split with $130 million dollars in fiat.

What about the $1bn stolen from moldovan banks?

There has been no customer recourse there.

Trillion? Really? That is an order of magnitude grater than bitcoins total market cap.

The MT.Gox disaster included the theft of ~7% of all BTC.

Depending on how you want to measure the amount of fiat currency in circulation, 7% of that would be close to a trillion dollars.

I would note that siphoning off massive amounts of money does happen in the fiat world despite regulation (but because off ineffective implementation of regulation) e.g. the Madoff case.

> I think that many people hold bitcoin and bitcoin businesses to a higher standard than they would companies that operate outside this sphere.

I hold them to exactly the same standard as traditional financial services. I can see you point in that for many people bitcoin is just voodoo (on the other hand for many people traditional financial services are voodoo and people trust them with their pensions).

They clearly said "the bitcoin industry" so their comment stands.