I'm not sure if this is necessarily a fail for a controlled market— there needed to be something in place to prevent it just being a giant land-grab followed by bankruptcies and consolidations everywhere as the bubble popped.

From my point of view it's less a failure in concept and more just a matter of tuning— which has been adjusted over time, though as expected, there has been some of that post-rush activity as various players have bought each other out (but probably a lot less than there would have been without the slow start).