Yikes... BTC just plummeted to $60 USD/BTC on other exchanges. https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_usd People wanted regulation and the closing of exchanges? Well... this is what happens when you only close ONE exchange during a run on a stock/commodity/etc. BTC is tumbling. EDIT: BTC-E.com is unavailable now periodically, other exchanges are lagging and taking the brunt of MtGox being offline. Looks like complete panic selling at this point. Wow.
I find this call for action over on /r/bitcoins really interesting. For those not wanting to click it is a request for four things to be focused on: 1) Change in max block size.
2) Decentralization of mining/end of guilds.
3) Decentralize the exchanges.
4) Improvement on hardware wallet and services like bitpay. I find it really interesting because 2 and 3 are basically issues attacking trusts. This is something that regulators go after. Bitcoin supporters solution to these problems is to lower the barrier to entry for people it seems (at least for 3, not sure about 2). This might solve it, but they are fighting against people who want to pool their resources, and especially for an exchange this has a lot of advantages that I believe would consistently lead to monopolies or oligopolies in exchanges. I hope this makes sense. And for clarity. I am not super knowledgable of bitcoins.
I find this part a bit hypocritical about the bitcoin communities. They wanted an anonymous and unregulated currency to be free from "the evil banksters", now they are crying out for regulation and oversight of the market because suddenly it's become an investment of a lot of money to them, and not just a "neat online currency they can use". It's so silly when you stand back and look at the big picture.