[millstone]

> I have some predictions: Gox will not be bailed out.

MtGox will not be bailed out because of the relative unimportance of bitcoin to the larger economy, not of any high-minded free market idealism.

Since the MtGox explosion, bitcoin prices (and therefore real purchasing power) are down by about 30%. If bitcoin were a national currency, the government would be doing everything in its power to prevent such a decline, including saving MtGox by any means possible. It would absolutely be too big to fail.

By way of comparison, Greece's economic woes drove its real purchasing power down by about 11%.

[Pitarou]

I think the writer was comparing Mt. Gox to certain US financial institutions, not Greece.

And this isn't "high-minded free market idealism". It's a practical observation. The state has given unconditional support to large financial institutions; institutions that are owned and managed for private profit. How can that possibly end well?

[thesimpsons1022]

the writer is the owner of the blockchain website so he does have his biases

[VanV]

FWIW, my understanding is that he is just the chief security officer at Blockchain.info [1], and not one of the owners.

[1] http://antonopoulos.com/

[ok_craig]

He is not the owner, he is the CSO.

[chkpt]

The problem is that there is a central authority that gets to decide "relative importance". Even granting that, isn't it perverse that this authority, having presumably decided what is and isn't of "relative importance", lacks the foresight to prevent the agents of these relatively important institutions to bring entire economies to the edge of the precipice?