Re: The Bitcointalk 50 BTC VIP club. Where are they now ? Complete list.
A failed business is not a "scam". But people who lose money or assets don't see it that way. I agree that most of the VIPs took risks and ran businesses and most of them with a large degree of success.
When you're handling other people's money, failure due to negligence or incompetence may be considered a crime.OTOH, I agree that there was usually no or very little criminal intention in many of the failed businesses of the past.
So I don't hold any grudges.
And as for the rest, Mt. Gox, and TradeFortress has not been proven to be scammers, but they are of course to blame that many people have suffered and lost a lot of money.
Despite of the massive catastrophic disaster when MtGox collapsed - MtGox was also responsible for some of the success of bitcoin and Karpeles did many good things. What could possibly go wrong?
Looking back, I think its worth mentioning that many of the important players in Bitcoin's early ecosystem's development were kids with too much money. Which is probably a good enough explanation for the amount of failure we've seen.
Then again, I'm an old grumpy man and always complain about the young