Do you think the US government acted late or early?
Just in time. As before, they're just ignoring it because it seems powerless to the government and as well as financial institutions. Now that it's raking millions of transactions and dollars, they cannot ignore it anymore and they have to protect the citizens that have been victimized by the scams. The positive side of what they've done is that they've tracked the suspects and responsible for the losses of many people. This is good if they're going to regulate it on that side for the protection of the victims but they also have a campaign to educate everyone on what to avoid and how to protect themselves from scammers and hackers.
For now we cannot say any good at it since by looking at this maybe they are just watching how the whole scene runs, maybe if we can settle up and see its natural potential we can see those US regulators will create a law towards its adoption. But we shouldn't expect it will happen anytime soon since for sure there are so many things it may go thru before our thought's will happen.