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The amount that participate depends upon the amount that care enough to spur such participation. If I had to guess, if 10% of the wider industry/cryptocurrency users were aware enough to participate, it'd be the end of HitBTC. It's totally achievable. This isn't isolated to Proof of Keys, either. If more people were warned about Bitconnect (and heeded those warnings earlier,) the fraud wouldn't have gone on as long and less people would've been burned.
It sounds like you disagree with some elements regarding Proof of Keys, which would be a whole other debate. However, if you can't get behind folks running the hell away from HitBTC, well... oof.
you are focusing too much on a single exchange while there are so many more exchanges that are a lot more scammy than HitBTC such as Yobit, bittrex, poloniex,... and there are indisputable proof of their scams. but guess what, nobody cares and they still keep going back to these exchanges and get scammed!
events like Proof of Keys are just social media drama that achieve nothing as long as people are blind to the warnings.