I think a large part of the problem of "verifying" Gox was that people desperately wanted the story to be true. If a big-name bank operated a bitcoin exchange

I think a large part of the problem of "verifying" Gox was that people desperately wanted the story to be true. If a big-name bank operated a bitcoin exchange that was repeatedly hacked, came up with a mountain of excuses about why people can't withdraw, made nonsensical claims about doing business (e.g. 10 wires/day, not trading in the USA etc.), no-one would use them. (edit: in The Real World, I imagine they'd have been shut down in seconds flat thanks to regulations, but for the sake of convenience let's pretend regulations don't exist) Instead, we had a plucky new underdog that people wanted to believe was creating history.