The United States overhauled its regulation of securities exchanges, broker-dealers and other intermediaries in 1934 [1]. Before that, it was not uncommon for random exchanges to (a) run away with peoples' money while claiming they went bankrupt, (b) actually go bankrupt, and (c) leave small investors stranded while big ones cashed out. In other words, all the market dysfunction the cryptocurrency markets took half a decade of unsupervised activity to re-invent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Exchange_Act_of_193...