O wait, maybe you're right. Maybe (or probably, I did not make a screen print) it said something like that sufficiently strong passwords didn't need additional proof. However, my reclaim was not accepted without additional proof regardless of the complex password.

For me this is a great place to exchange experiences and to find out if there are other people with the same problem. Which turns out to be true.
In the mean time I'm trying to get mtgox to solve the problem, while ventilating my experiences, sorrows and emotions in here.

Ok, status update: They did get back to me, I got a new password, but only to find out that my 'pre-crash' balances were 'withdrawn'. No bitcoin address to where the BTCs supposedly were 'withdrawn', and no info about the 'pre-crash' USDs that were in my account.
I R R I T A T I N G

Looks neat. How much is the value of the gold on the coin, in USD?

You got a strong point here. One of the reasons of the succes of the Wörgl Experiment is that the currency was losing its value (got taxed) if one didn't spend it.

I shouldn't have had to claim, as the website said that people with a suficiently complex password would get their accounts back automatically.
But even a password like:     7L8(l^qDx*(_fSG!3n     apparently isn't complex enough.

So I had to reclaim, which I did.
Then the claim was approved but 1 day later my new password was invalidated and I got noo more responses to my requests!

Not a good thing! The anonimity provided by physical cash is better than the anonymity BTCs provide.

Let's assume currencies lose half their buying power in a 10 years period, and that there is a world money supply of 4 trillion USD at the moment.
We know the max. number of BTCs possible is 21 million.
Then the maximum value a BTC could obtain is BTC 1 = (USD 16 trillion 20 years from now)/(BTC 21 million 20 years from now) = USD 750,000.
In current USD value, that would then be about BTC 1 = USD 250,000 as a rough and rounded estimate.

That is the upper limit on the BTC value, assumed that all financial transactions will be carried out through BTC at that time.

There almost was: The Lybian Gold Dinar.

But 'luckily' the bankers prevented this from happening  

My password was NOT cracked.

My password consisted of 18 characters, of which only 9 alphabetical and of which 3 were capitals.
The rest consisted of 3 randomly chosen numerical characters and 6 non-alphanumerical characters.

The mtgox website wrote after 'the incident' that accounts with 'sufficiently complex passwords' would be re-instated automatically.
Well, that didn't happen. I had to reclaim my account, got a new password. And it worked for 1 day.
Now my password is invalidated and mtgox does not reply to my requests for a new password:
If I go through the "password forgotten" procedure at login, it says it has sent a new password to my email, but non ever arrived.
Now my IP is even blocked 'due to too many failed login attempts'.

There are BTCs and USDs in my account there and I am getting really pissed!

If I use GPG for my e-mails in Evolution, for every encrypted e-mail it asks for the password.
Why not implement this also in a bitcoin client: for every transaction the password is required, and the wallet is decrypted but not saved on HD, only in RAM when it is needed for the transaction.
This way the wallet is never decrypted in a file on the HD and is difficult to be stolen.

I found the button, clicked it, got my new password accepted, and now it doesn't work anymore.
If I ask for a new one, I read: "A new password has beent sent to your email address.", but if I check my email: nothing...
Frustrating, because I can't be sure that nobody else has re-claimed my account and took away my balance.

Did you fail to read the part about responsible disclosure?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_disclosure

Edit:
I need to be very humble because you people have put so much effort, ingenuity and skills into this program, and I'm just a newcomer/user of the system, but I really have fun taking part in this kind of conceptual discussions.
So I wanted to say that I think that probably you are right and Satoshi is right.
And I think we can make it better, no? (Oops, excluding myself from the 'we', because I'm a very poor programmer.)  

After checking his whitepaper I found this:
Mentioning this as a disadvantage for 'old' currency in a paper in which he proposes a new one, means for me that he intends the bitcoin to perform better in that respect. Sorry if I missed later posts on this forum in which he states otherwise, but that's how I read it.

And a micro-payment requires a micro-fee, so I think the only fixed parameter for the minimum payout of a fee, would be the minimal denomination of the bitcoin, i.e. something like 10^-8 BTC(?).

Yes, but the point was to have a small fee that can be sent as a reward for the verification.
It's not very nice if you're only left with the choice between sending a huge fee (BTC 0.01 when USD 1 = 1 UBC) or none.
That's not the point. One of the intentions of the BTC is to make micropayments easy and cheap. USD 0.19 (or more) isn't cheap

On the other hand, if you'd parameterise (sorry for my UK English) the fee, who is going to decide about a new fee? Some centralised agency (Satoshi and/or Gavin)?
Or the program itself, based on ... yeah, what exactly? Exchange value of the BTC/USD?
Or maybe some kind of closed feedback loop with a fixed (hehe, here we go again: why not also parameterised?) difficulty setpoint? 

Not to take over all the other currencies?
It's a little bit a pity that 'they' didn't do some 'back of the envelope' calculations like this.
But hey, they did a great job anyway 

Yes, I agree with that one. Bitcoins are too great a threat to the interests of the banking cabal for them to just let it take over their business. And not only business, as one Rothschild bankster already has said: 'Let me control the issue of money in a country, and I do not care who writes its laws. Because he who has control over the issuance of money, has control over the country. And I control the issuance of money.' or something close to that. We are talking here about taking control over the world out of the hands of the biggest and wealthiest (banker) families on the world, who have shown not to be shy of (having countries) starting wars to protect their interests (in two meanings) and wealth.
No doubt, as bitcoin will grow, governments, controlled by the banks -- and that includes much like all countries, except (what a coincidence) those on the 'axis of evil': Venezuela, Libia, Iran, Afghanistan (oh no, we 'solved' that one), Syria, North-Korea -- will crack down with full force on the network.
First demonising it: "Used for laundring money, drug traficking (of course the CIA is a big user of bitcoin), weapons dealing and child porn." as if the USD isn't used for this.
Then by demonising everybody who dares to use it.
This will be combined with encroaching legislation: forbidding the exchanges to keep it a virtual currency, then forbidding the network traffic of it (deep packet inspection), forbidding TOR, restricting access to internet until everybody HAS to connect every service through an ISP portal (this will be combined with a total monopoly of the big ISP corporations).
Then SWAT-team like crackdowns on the exchanges and ultimately on the private households that are using the bitcoin network (and are listed now 'as we speak') and will continue to use it after the legislation has been passed that outlaws the use of it.
Then it will be a black market thing, with high fines and imprisonment for 'perpetrators of economic crimes'.

Great to see that! Thanks for setting things straight.

And for the rest of respondents like FreeMoney, mewantsbitcoins, mintaka, proudhon: I had a good laugh with your replies  

Still, I don't see why you'd want to design a currency of which 1 coin would ultimately be worth +/- 1 million dollar?

Just teasing    ... No, actually I was just worried to death that a bigtime failure was built in.
But let's get back to the facts indeed: then 1 micro bitcoin / USD makes BTC 1 / 10^8 = 1 dollar cent.

That means... yehey!, you're right.

Doom and destruction aren't neigh!

Ok, so the dollar cent is hiding inside the smallest possible denomination of the BTC.
Now, either this is an ingenious hint of premonition regarding the utmost stability of the BTC's value, or still 1 or 2 orders of magnitude short.
In my opinion it is the latter.

I dare to disagree with you on that.
Or, at least I have some serious doubts.

The world's wealth in 2007 was more or less 150 trillion $ (USD 1.5 * 10^+12) [1]
The number of people living on earth is more or less 7 billion (7 * 10^+9) [2]
The maximum number of bitcoins is 21 million (2.1 * 10^+7) [3]

This means there is 21*10^7/7*10^9 = 0.03 BTC for every world citizen.
And the current wealth, expressed in the total available number of bitcoins in USD/BTC is 1.5*10^12/2.1*1+7 = 0.5*10^12/0.7*10^7 = 0.7 *10^5 = USD 70,000 / BTC.
With inflation going like it's going now, USD 1 might be (I'm speculating here) worth only 1 UBC (micro Bitcoin) by the time all 21 million Bitcoins are created.
Does this make the bitcoin ultimately usable as a worldwide currency, replacing current currencies?

I think not, and it's built-in.


References:
[1] http://www.stockmarketfunding.com/getfile/343e5d94-2871-48a5-9aa6-550c3da0bbd2/World-Wealth-vs-World-Derivatives-1998-2007.aspx , http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/US_derivatives_and_US_wealth_vs_total_world_wealth_1995-2007.gif/800px-US_derivatives_and_US_wealth_vs_total_world_wealth_1995-2007.gif

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ,
http://www.google.com/chart?cht=lxy&chd=s:ABCDEGHIJLMNOQRSTVWXYabcdfghiklmnpqrsuvwxz01245679,XXXYYZZaabccddeffgghhijjkklmmnoopqqrrsttuuvwwxxyzz&chds=0.0,1.0&chs=160x101&chco=287bf5ff&chls=2.0,1.0,0.0&chxt=x,r,x,r&chxs=0,333333,0,0,tl,333333|1,333333,0,-1,tl,333333|2,000000,11.5,-1,tl,333333|3,000000,11.5,-1,tl,333333&chxtc=0,2|1,2|2,0|3,0&chm=h,cccccc,0,1,1,1|h,cccccc,0,0.5,1,-1&chxp=2,0,82|3,5,50,95&chxl=0:|1960|2009|1:|0|4B|8B|2:|1960|2009|3:|0|4B|8B

[3] Mentioned many times here in this forum