It's hard to say, not having the technical background to fully understand the BTC protocol, whether the accusations that put all the blame at MtGox's feet are valid. My takeaway from the whole situation, though, is that <i>if</i> it's purely a problem with the MtGox implementation the market will take care of it. If consumers still see the same benefits of BTC (and I don't see any reason they wouldn't), the demand for the services of a similar exchange will shift to a competitor with better engineering creds.<p>I have two questions, though. 1) What's the confidence level of the public that there aren't more fundamental issues with the protocol itself; and 2) are there any competing cryptocurrencies that, by design, wouldn't be as susceptible to problems like MtGox introduced into the ecosystem?