What I don’t understand is that the whole lure of Bitcoin was it’s decentralization of the control of the assets.
Then people put their Bitcoins in a centralized location (Hot Wallet on the site) when they could have kept all of their Bitcoins on a local machine, with backups, and would not be affected by anything that happened at a transaction site other than the possible loss of Bitcoins that were involved in an active transaction.
Why?
If they gave up the security of decentralization simply for the added convenience, then I can’t really drum up a whole lot of sympathy.
It’s the illusion of security. People are afraid their computer will be hacked, or they’ll grab a virus, or their computer will crash, but some central repository says they’re secure... I wouldn’t want to keep thousand of dollars of virtual money on my PC, especially not my old PC that was going through death throws. Of course I wouldn’t keep it in some random website either. If I got a bitcoin my #1 goal would be to turn it into cash in my normal bank by the end of the day.