> Centralized institutions do provide a safety net, but is there anything necessarily wrong with a group of people saying they don't want or need that?

Not at all! However, within the context of cryptocurrencies, I can't help but note that there seems to be a certain tendency to blindly idealize decentralization, and especially to blindly demonize regulation, without giving any thought as to why things are what they are right now.

> regarding the Mt. Gox situation. You present it as something that should have never happened in civilized society, but I think it's growing pains on the way to something better.

Here, I disagree. Growing pains are no excuse for being as reckless as they were. If your clients entrusted you with hundreds of millions of their USD (either directly, or through Bitcoin), then I don't see "but startup" as a valid excuse; you owe them a certain amount of diligence in your conduct.

Note that this isn't investors losing hundreds of millions on some innovation gamble (à la Uber), but on an operation where there are literally hundreds of years of precedent to learn from, namely: exchanges.