Quote from: coinage on February 25, 2014, 05:05:47 AM

Quote from: Melbustus on February 25, 2014, 04:01:10 AM

Whatever happens in the short-term dealing with this mess, I'm happy this phase is concluding. Gox was a holdover from early bitcoin, where clearly incompetent people/operations handled massive amounts of customer funds, and we've been needing to get sharply over that phase for a while now. This does so rather dramatically. I look forward to bitcoin moving into the next phase of adoption driven by far more professional entities.

Good, but please let's remember that the actual solution will be "Phase 3," which can't arrive too soon: high-volume Decentralized Exchanges and practical Multisignature Transactions.

As long as we're in Phase 2 (Competent professional people/operations HANDLING massive amounts of customer funds) the true promise of cryptocurrencies is still unrealized, and massive losses/thefts/freezes can still occur.

"Phase 3" companies, however, can arise to provide rich capabilities for bitcoin storage & exchange, BUT would be unable to abscond with significant funds because users could choose to retain full control of their transactions. Bulletproof multisignature capabilities can make that possible.

Or just do business with a company which never holds customer bitcoins and offers same day wires so any late payments become obviously rather quickly.