Well, with $100k+ in fiat, I missed the BTC train (and BCH), so I have less than half of what I would have had if I was in coin at the time. Taking a 50% loss now would bring that down to a quarter. Sure BTC trading is about betting, but now I'm betting those 50k that they will honor the payback rather than losing them with 100% certainty.
it all falls back on the saying "1 bird in hand is better then 2 in the bush"
I'm with this. I won't go into details about my personal situation, and I actually believe that BTC-e will relaunch and allow remaining users to recover more than 55% of their accounts. They are showing pretty clear intent to do so, and refunds are flowing.
The haircut is not ideal, but a trader can recoup the losses over time with this amount of capital preserved. There is a non-zero chance that things could go awry for the new site, or that the withdrawal limits or terms for verification are not agreeable. One thing that is clear for me is that I'm not willing to verify ID and continue doing business with a site under indictment by the US government. It's worth giving up 45% just not to have that kind of shit hanging over my head. I was no small fry either, although I never would have kept all my crypto funds on one exchange.
Those that are staying, I understand why. The rest can walk away and put this behind them (without worry of having funds stuck on the site for weeks or months on end, or being unable to verify, etc). It's just a matter of grinding back the losses...