MtGox was, incontestably first biggest trading platform and for a big period, the one with the most volume. It became, for the outsiders at least, homonymous with Bitcoin. Lots of people had their life savings in there and I saw accounts of desperate people that lost everything.
Accounting the huge loss this case is a scandal that has to get direct scrutiny from LEAs, financial, academic and media institudions.
This has to go sooner or later in economics textbooks as the biggest (scam, heist, incompetence, you name it) case in internet's history. Also
legal action needs to be taken and all facts investigated professionally. Thus being said, we need to analyze what impact it had on the bitcoin ecosystem. I can name a few:
- a big PR hit, mostly for people that never invested and now have lower confidence in Bitcoin
- more scrutiny from big financial institutions (banks especially) who have direct ties to exchanges
- less coins available to trade, as 900k are missing from their owners
- believers in bitcoin, mostly those that didn't have all eggs in one basket are going through the acceptance phase and might be ready to buy some again
But what about long term, residual effects? I only can think of one:
With 0.9 mil coins less than we thought, confidence into centralized wallets / exchanges and lesson learned, whoever wants to buy, buys or bought already and stores into cold storage.
There is no way were going to see that kind of speculation from the past and this will translate into less volatility.
