Yeah, that's a good point, but precious metals are mostly just on paper, right? I've heard claims that some gold is owned and claimed in a fractional reserve way by many different entities. Even though it's physical, what actually gets traded are just (often) unconfirmed IOU's. Yes, the same thing could happen for cryptocurrencies, but I'm hoping the people in this space will continue to push for all exchanges to use a proof of reserves approach to demonstrate they actually have the cryptocurrency they are trading.

We should have learned our lessons from MtGox to use things like BitShares more. Unfortunately, some people never learn until they personally get burned.