My suspicion (I am not an expert on finance) is that (if it remains successful long enough) Bitcoin is going to end up being fractionally reserved by the exchanges—I mean openly so, with the consent of the depositors. That should generate a large increase in the apparent supply of Bitcoins. I mean, gold is already heavily fractionally reserved...
And as we saw with the banks, fools who hand over money to unregulated banks don't get their money back. Why would any bank not steal all the money, or get robbed, when it costs nothing to do so?
