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By Jeremy Wagstaff SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The apparent collapse of Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox isnt bothering Anthony Hope and others who have ditched steady careers in government and finance to build bitcoin companies – and who stand to lose money they have in Mt. Gox. Hope, a former British Treasury official and now head of compliance at Hong Kong-based MatrixVision, says that while Mt. Goxs fate is unclear, its troubles form part of a wider shift as more professional players move into the bitcoin mainstream. Over the longer term it will be good for bitcoin because over time the entire ecosystem will be made more robust. Steve Beauregard, CEO and founder of Singapore-based GoCoin, is more blunt about Mt. Goxs woes: Its important in the sense of sweeping away a lot of the early unsophisticated folk who got into this and made a name for themselves, but didnt have the management horsepower to manage a company. Mt. Gox, at one time the biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading this week amid reports on the internet that more than 744,000 bitcoins – worth around $380 million at prevailing rates – had been stolen.