regulation is not a guarantee of much. major banks in foreign exchange are in the middle of a scandal involving widespread collusion on fixing of prices.

Bernie Madoff's customers wanted a regulated market. Bernie Madoff's customers got a regulated market.

CMO buyers wanted a regulated market. CMO buyers got a regulated market.

I could go on for a while. But I'm left wondering - do you really think that your comment is insightful or are you just reveling in schadenfreude?

As many have observed, it is not as if conventional currencies are free from this sort of problem either. But I do not draw an equivalence between the two types of crisis. What matters is that BitCoin faces the exact same question conventional currencies face when some sort of disaster strikes... what comes next? It should have been obvious to all, skeptic and advocate alike, that this sort of thing would happen in the "early days" of BitCoin. (Assuming of course that it survives long enough for this to be the "early days".) The question that determines whether it lives or dies is what emerges in reaction to solve this problem.

Don't chortle gleefully at the fact some disaster struck; it is a true and valid observation that conventional currencies still have disasters strike. Chortle if it proves that there's no practical solution to this sort of problem.

I have been and remain broadly skeptical. However, rationality forces me to concede that BitCoin has already gotten further than I would have predicted. The reaction to this crisis, moreso than the crisis itself, will be another interesting test of whether it has true staying power.

BTW... should BitCoin survive this, more disasters are absolutely sure to come. And when that happens, the question will be, what happens next?

I believe we're in the beginning of a weird transitory period right now, but in the long term cryptography and cryptocurrencies have the potential to replace the need for certain types of regulation entirely.

For example, it's possible to build a decentralized exchange between different cryptocurrencies (or assets where ownership tracked on a crypto ledger) where no party needs to trust any other party at all (e.x. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_cross-chain_trading)