Nothing personal (I don't know you at all)but I find it ironic that you want bitcoin users on other exchanges to pick up the tab for your poor investment decision. Cavest investor, and all that. The irony of a bitcoin bailout is pretty damn thick.
Before the news of gox's massive 740k BTC loss, I had considered the possibility that a competing exchange would buy out MtGox, cover the small hole in customer balances (10-50k BTC) and gain a larger customer base while also boosting the confidence of the bitcoin community.
A "bailout" could have been mutually beneficial. 740k BTC is way too much.
Yeah, I should have added that by bailout I meant financed by other industry participants rather than via some notional hit on everyone's BTC holdings - but ultimately the cost would have to be passed back to the users in the form of increased transaction costs.
Not necessarily - there could be a variety of reasons that other companies would pitch in to cover holders of BTC in Mt Gox - not the least of which is faith in the bitcoin economy as a whole. There's nothing about an unregulated currency that means "screw you".
For people with money on MtGox this is an unfortunate situation. There is no way other exchanges would take money from customers and give it back into MtGox users. That would be absolutely unethical. The other option is for exchanges to collectively absorb the financial cost of Gox stupidity. At $350m, I'd say no chance of that happening.
The Gox price already tanked and a huge chunk of their funds already moved out. It was the mistake of anyone who invested in Gox, and more importantly kept their money in Gox, to do so with a company that time and time again proved its incompetence.
They'd still have their money if they had just avoided BTC altogether. You, as an end user, are probably never going to be in a position to really make an informed judgement about any particular exchange, the validity of the protocol, or much else, really. The latter things you can feel reasonably sure of because they've been vetted by a lot of people, but there's always the possibility that someone has missed something.
