This thread is stupid. As if satoshi could or should prevent people from forming foundations and then decide who can and can not join those foundations.
Bitcoin is fine, Gox and it's users are temporarily putting a bad taste in everyone's mouth. In time this will pass and Bitcoin will be better off because of it (if people learn to make better choices when it comes to picking an exchange and how they use it).
Truly wise words. The sutuation with mtgox is just bad, but I'm sure it will make bitcoin even stronger and more valuable after all.
Beautiful words, but I don't see the wisdom. When MtGox goes down, the headline will be "The former biggest Bitcoin exchange went under, investors lost everything". That certainly won't help Bitcoin, neither in short or long term.
It certainly will in the long term. It will teach people (the hard way) to stop treating Bitcoin like traditional forms of money (leaving it in a "bank account"). It will teach them that if you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins. It will teach them to read the writing on the wall the next time they choose an exchange (Gox has been incompetent from the start, that should be clear to anyone who does even a tiny bit of research).
All of these things will lead to better informed users and more robust exchanges.
+1. Completely agree.
People need to really understand the idea of holding your own funds; how unique/breakthrough that is. Keeping non-trivial funds on Gox (or anywhere where you do not *solely* control the private key) is just unnecessary gambling; letting someone else control your money. Exactly what we're trying to get away from!
Further, I *hope* this triggers a movement for more transparency in bitcoin businesses. Bitcoin, like nothing else, allows for massive operational transparency. As customers of bitcoin businesses, we should demand best-practices of proving solvency through signing addresses, etc...