People that don't trust BTC, don't trust it because they don't understand it. Bitcoin isn't trying to compete with USD. It's a niche market for people interseted in trading anonymously and buying goods that they can't otherwise. Eventually it may grow, and that's fine.

What do you propose? A big PR push that BTC is safe? What if another exchange screws up? How are you going to explain that BTC itself is safe, but that third parties that interact with it require a seperate layer of trust?

I trust BTC. I use BTC. I don't trust Mt.Gox, so I'll go use another exchange. Again, none of this was the result of ANY flaw in BTC.

I mean, I guess bitcoin.org can run a banner "Mt.Gox's problems were unassociate with the safety of Bitcoin", but that's not going to help anything... and besides, there is still literally nothing that can ever be done about securing the currency of uninformed users.

If people want insured, centrally-authorized currencies, they need to go elsewhere. There's nothing to trust in BTC except the cryptographic soundness of SHA-whatever.

Bitcoins can only be useful for you if other people also use it. Whether or not people use it depends on wether they have trust.

Now, all those who trust Bitcoin less because of this may be ignorant fools and doomed to be ignorant fools forever but maybe you might be able to convince them. That’s all I’m saying. PR problems are rarely entirely rational.

I don't disagree that there is a PR problem here. I just don't know how or who is supposed to solve it. BitCoin.org doens't have a vested interest in the success of the currency and all they can say is "BTC is safe. Make sure you trust your exchange."

Sure they can flower it up and repeat the salient parts so that's what users walk away with in their mind... but I guess my thing is... I don't want people using the currency if they don't understand the implications. There aren't PR disasters if the users understand what they're getting into.

(and on that note, everything I've seen so far seems to be pretty accurate about blaming the exchange and not the currency)

I guess you could liken it to a bank. If a bank is robbed, we don't doubt the solvency of the US Dollar....