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Many people have withdrawn their money since last June. The red flag was there for months. People staying there were either playing with fire, lazy, or simply ignorant.
Although that might be a good idea to regulate bitcoin exchange, that is irrelevant to the bitcoin as a currency or protocol. You don't need an exchange to spend or receive bitcoin.
Many people believed in bitcoin and got badly burnt. If you are suggesting that only sophisticated investors should use bitcoin, so be it.
Anyways, regulation can be enforced only by governments and in ways that they see fit. If regulation comes into the bitcoin world, I expect it to be intrusive and impose rules on the way bitcoin works. NB When I refer to the bitcoin model I don't mean just the intellectual and technical marvels of the bitcoin protocol, but to the way bitcoin plays out in the practice of people's lives, which IMO is what matters.
Believers in Bitcoin were not burnt.
Believers in MtGox were burnt. The warnings were obvious to me 2 years ago. By 6 months ago even a gadfly like the Winkelevii knew to get out of the way.
MPOE-PR said it best over a year ago. MtGox must die for Bitcoin to move forward.