The problem is not that it doesn't have regulation, but rather that it has ambiguous regulation. As it stands, you can't start up a business that facilitates the transaction of bitcoin without being a registered money transmitter in the US. This requires state by state registry, with legal representation in each state you are registering. This is extremely expensive. People could be creating some pretty kick ass businesses in the BTC space, utilizing block chain technology, but they can't. Couple this with the FACT that no banks will bank with a BTC business and you have a virtually impossible industry to do business in, UNLESS you are an established bank, are heavily backed by a known VC firm etc. But the way most startups in a nascent space get up and running is by being boot-strapped and forward thinking. -Those things don't matter with BTC. Good ideas can't flourish. It sucks. I speak from experience.