The market went from around $17 to $0.01 within minutes. Where were the safeguards, or is a 99.95% drop in the market considered normal?
Yes. Low liquidity and a front loaded bitcoin distribution with a few very potent early adopters will do that. If don't like the ability of these people to crash the market at will, stay away from Bitcoin.
It's not the early adopters I'm worried about. It's the people who target those accounts and ransack the market at will. Bitcoin is meant to be a serious effort to create a P2P digital currency. Businesses are meant to take it seriously as a means of value exchange. Events such as yesterday's and people defending the manipulated market as 'if it's the will of the market to crash to zero, then so be it' does not inspire confidence.