There's nothing wrong with them keeping a proprietary ledger of accounts, but attaching their crap code to the network is a crime of epic proportions. Hopefully Ethereum will help with this.
Better blame proprietary software. Whatever you do, don't question your assumptions. And under no circumstances should you think about the fact that fiat banks in the US all use proprietary software and rarely experience serious problems (and when they do, consumers' deposits are insured up to a large amount).
Turns out they try to make you spend it by continually inflating the supply of them out there with no end. In order to keep your head above water, you have to put in a "bank".
Fine, it compensates you for the loss of purchasing power, so no biggie, right? Wrong. They actually lend out the dollars that are supposed to be in your account so when you come to get your dollars out, they might not even be there!
Now, they claim to have this handled, but it's kind of a hacky solution: supposedly what happens is that they'll go to a head honcho and get a temporary loan to be able to pay you, but they only give this privilege those that can get the political connections.
They also have have this system where you money is "insured" so that even if they can't get a loan "your dollars are safe, you'll still be able to get them out!" Kludgy, but it should work, right? Well, it turns out the insurance fund couldn't actually handle everyone pulling their money back out!
So, yeah, kind of hip, but I don't think it can catch on as a serious model, especially once auditors and whatnot get involved.
So that when an exploitable bug is found in that common solution, it can be used to hit every exchange at once?
It is much safer to have multiple, independent solutions.
All these articles written about what happened but no one able to just look at the blockchain and give hard numbers.
That makes such woes some sort of contribution towards a better economy.
