I lost a bit of money to Mt. Gox (<$100, not enough to matter) because I'd moved a little money in there to sell at the highest rate I could get. The key for m

I lost a bit of money to Mt. Gox (<$100, not enough to matter) because I'd moved a little money in there to sell at the highest rate I could get. The key for me was that I didn't trust the exchange, especially given that I am an American and it's across the Pacific and has had problems in the past. I just moved a small amount in to see if I could sell and get it out right away. Found out that they have a really cumbersome verification process to get your money out, which I hadn't finished by the time this all went down. The key here is that I didn't just go in and move all my holdings before I was confident in what was going on. I'm honestly not sure why anyone would have kept a substantial amount of BTC on Mt. Gox. If you are holding BTC, why not move it somewhere like Coinbase, where there may actually be some level of oversight and technical competence? You could always have moved it back to Mt. Gox to sell, and the transaction fees are trivial.