Leverage created more of a problem in the Swiss Franc situation though. Since a big move in conventional FOREX markets is a couple of percentage POINTS, i.e. fractions of a percent, the leverage allowed is huge, like 30x or so, whereas in bitcoin markets leverage is available but much smaller. I think BTCe only offers 4x leverage, so when BTC drops 30%, you get an effective 120% disparity to cover, but when swiss franc moves 10% with 30x leverage, it's a 300% loss to cover for some. And since national currencies are considered very low volatility, and the swiss franc "as good as gold" there were hundreds of millions parked in it, with the expectation that the risk profile was low, then shorting it was only considered maybe medium risk... so your medium risk investment, of your many millions, suddenly ends up with a 300% margin call.... that is not a good day.
You are missing one point
1 BTC = 215 USD
1 CHF ( swiss franc ) = 1.16 USD
so the 30% drop or increase it's really BIG compared with eachother, so bitcoin is a LOT more volatile than any other currency.
You're missing the point that 10% variation in the Swiss franc did a lot more "damage" than 30% swing in bitcoin, due to one being expected to be volatile and the other not. In effect, maximum losses on 30% swing of BTC were ~120%, maximum losses on Swiss Franc were ~300%. IF you're going to point to which one is worse for business, look at the bigger amount of "damage" because export and import firms hedge against exchange variations, and if hedging has snowballed like that and cost them most of their profit for the year, it's baaad mmmkay.