The public has very little (it's inaccurate to say "no") means of assessing the safety of banks precisely because the government has told them not to worry abou

The public has very little (it's inaccurate to say "no") means of assessing the safety of banks precisely because the government has told them not to worry about it, to just bank wherever and let the FDIC sort everything out. There is almost no market demand whatsoever for liquidity or safety reporting services in USD banking Before the FDIC's existence, there was a plethora of publications, audit services, and third-party examiners for banks -- a kind of like Consumer Reports for financial institutions. If fractional reserve banking ever takes hold in Bitcoin (and there's reason to doubt that it will, the system is kind of designed to discourage it as much as possible), I expect something similar will arise in Bitcoin. Here's a paper talking about the bank reputation ecosystem and how it worked in the pre-FDIC days. Contrary to popular modern perceptions, it wasn't an era of constant boondoggles by shady wildcat banks. http://www.nber.org/papers/w4400.pdf?origin=publication_detail http://www.nber.org/papers/w4400.pdf?origin=publication_deta...