[lysol]

If it wasn't a stolen balance then I would agree with you. A massive sell-off of BTC could've happened at any time. But in terms of self-preservation it would've been in MtGox's best interest to have a circuit breaker. I'm contradicting myself a little here, but I've been having a lot of cognitive dissonance over Bitcoin anyway :)

[swishercutter]

Exactly...had it been a real selloff by some crazy early adopter the market would have absorbed it and recovered. Circuit breakers prevent mass panic sells...I guess a lot of those panic sells were prevented by server load (inability to log in fast enough).

I doubt the real stock market could take something like what happened without serious issues remember 500k/~6M were exchanged in a matter of minutes at a rate that was obviously far below market value.

I personally doubt Mt.Gox had any bad intentions and I personally do not think they are lying now...but then again I had no money in the exchange at the time. Also, I am aware Mt.Gox is (was) the biggest exchange out there but there are many others...they are not the only fish...just the biggest, for some reason news articles typically imply they were the only option for BTC exchange.

If Bitcoin failed tomorrow I would still be glad to have been a part of it, history is being made as we speak...even if history just writes it off as a failure.