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Gox shuts down = BTC CRASH.
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I have to doubt that based on historic precedent. I happened to have gotten serious enough about Bitcoin to use a typical exchange during the fortnight-ish the Mt. Gox was off-line due to their hack. It seemed to have had a remarkably small impact on the actual valuations. They were already in decline and continued in much the same trend once Mt. Gox came back.
If you are implying that Mt. Gox would lose significant BTC I highly doubt that. They have way to much experience, skill, and money not to have a robust cold storage regime. If they lose BTC it is almost completely certain to be an inside job.
You're missing the point, he's saying the Japanese Government could shut down Gox in a permanent way and have their assets frozen for years. I have been wondering this same thing myself...
With all the exchanges being shut down around the world, why has the largest one never been targeted by anything more than unruly hackers? Gox is the single largest chokepoint and is entirely responsible for determining the price of BTC as most people see it, yet it seems immune to regulatory troubles that increasingly plague exchanges around the world. Is Japan such an advantageous legal environment to operate in? Are there other international exchanges taking advantage of this and operating out of Japan?
If Gox was shut down by the Japanese government it would have a MAJOR impact on the price, and while it might recover depending on how other exchanges react and how usable decentralized exchanges are by that point, I think it's obvious the impact would be probably as significant as anything else in Bitcoins lifecycle so far.
It's not about losing BTC to a hack, it's about a sea-change event eliminating the largest player in the currency conversion game