So you are saying MintPal have no duty whatsoever to review the legitimacy of their wares? Does a Sunday marketplace care if a kiddie porn seller sets up a stall? Does Ebay care if someone tries to sell Marijuana? Does a Car salesman care if his product crashes immediately after purchase and kills all occupants? I think MintPal has a contractual connection between us and the AC dev and as the AC dev is conspicuous in their absence, a court of law would acknowledge that MintPal has a duty of care to ensure their customers are not getting swindled.
Might I remind you that AC hasn't just dropped in price. It has disappeared from existence.
MintPal are the contractual link. Their operations must be fair and reasonable. Letting AC drop as far as they did over such a long timespan strongly suggests criminal collaboration.
In the real, and regulated economy there are laws and consequences.. if Mintpal or any of the other exchanges were operating in the real economy... (or if anyone big enough cared).. yeah they'd go down, or at least be slapped with penalties. Not profit from other's misery.
However, this is the crypto economy, and it's the alt crypto economy on top of that... it's still kind of underground, completely unregulated.
Morally.. it's not right.. I hope they feel bad about it (though likely not)... but outside of that there's no laws that govern here... that's just the unfortunate reality.