many people forget that Bitstamp "reserve" it's the client's Bitcoin.
Pretty much this. People forget customer's money is NOT a Bitstamp asset. They have to cover up the losses from their income, which is based on trading fees.
I may add...and not only on trading fees. You cannot make millions from 0.03%. This is like free so they have other source of making money from this biz; maybe the price difference...
Fees are from 0.4 to 1% at bitstamp (buyer and seller pay from 0.2-0.5%), they generate majority of the profits, check volume and you will see, so they can cover loss with that.
let's not forget that they reported a profit of about 800k USD in 2013....
even we double it because Bitstamp may report fake numbers in order to avoid possible taxes....it's 2 mil USD per year net profit roughly.
we can say they need 2 years to recover the loss (IF they will have the same amount of clients; clients who will run away ones the Bitstamp will open the withdrawals).
in the mean time, they have to open their pockets and hoping that everything will be as in 2014.... very hard to believe that,