"There was no question the feds would take an interest in Bitcoin with desire to take it down" Perhaps, but the only reason that is relevant to attacking a Bit

"There was no question the feds would take an interest in Bitcoin with desire to take it down" Perhaps, but the only reason that is relevant to attacking a Bitcoin exchange is if Bitcoin cannot survive without exchanges. I personally agree with that view, as everything I have seen suggests that no standalone Bitcoin economy is possible. On the other hand, a large number of people in the Bitcoin community disagree and seem to think that a Bitcoin economy can be bootstrapped. "Require enough paperwork, and somewhere a sufficient transgression will be found." The paperwork in this case was not very complicated; it plainly asks if the business transfers money at the request of its customers, and MtGox simply answered "no." It is not as though MtGox is being investigated for not filling out paperwork or for a bad answer to an ambiguous or confusing question. MtGox was already engaged in exchanging Bitcoin for USD and was already performing transfers of money for its customers when those forms were filled out. I agree with your general sentiment, but I seriously doubt that anyone in the government was sitting there saying, "Bitcoin is a threat, let's take it down! Start with this exchange!" More likely, some regulator somewhere saw that Bitcoin was becoming popular and said, "Let's make sure they are following the same laws that other financial companies are expected to follow." Those laws predate Bitcoin; they may have been set up to protect large banks from small competitors, or they may have been created to protect individual Americans from fraud and predatory companies, but that is an entirely separate issue.