You know very well it is just as impossible to prove the bold statement as proving or disproving the underlined statement.

MtGox made a commitment a very long time ago (2011) to not sell their BTC, and only use it as a currency for purchases, etc.  They will pay salaries in BTC as well, but when MT was asked about this last year he said none of his employees had asked for that.  The known purchases are a website or two, an exchange in Poland (17k BTC, the largest I know of) and their Bitcoin Foundation membership fees (25k BTC the first year iirc, much lower now).

People with some technical understanding can easily see this is a technical issue.  Not an easy one.

Some people with limited technical understanding claim there is a ghost in their computer and return it to the manufacturer when there is a software problem.  I guess this is the equivalent.  MtGox have made about 400k BTC in fees over the years (estimated from volume), and have spent very little of this.  Some in Bitcoin Foundation membership fee and some to buy other companies.  All the evidence is clearly on the technical side.

The support page does not mention for how long a transaction must have been waiting until it is considered stuck.  I think it is a week currently, but have asked someone at MtGox support to specify it in the support page to avoid confusion and the spread of panic.

And a really bad one based on what we already know.

Why do people make up stuff like that?  Ah, to make even more money on arbitrage, of course.  I forgot.

Ah, right, you were speculating wildly from there.  I think we should wait for an announcement.  It will be clearer to you then, if you bother to read it.  But I know you well enough to know you aren't going to pay much attention to it, because the truth will be much less interesting than the stories you can make of it. :-)

How on earth did you make that up?  Including the part about letting people go.  MtGox has hired dozens of people lately just to keep up with support.

No, it is not a database problem.

A small tx is likely to use fewer inputs.  Because an unknown portion of the inputs MtGox may attempt to use are void, the chance of failure is higher the more inputs your tx require.

No, I will leave it up to MtGox due to the risk of disclosing too many details prematurely, and because there are enough people spreading rumours already.  People will always think the rumours are better than the truth anyway.  Since I have no other knowledge about MtGox's wallet than what can be deduced from previous delayed transactions, my explanation will have a few assumptions in it as well.

Here is everything disclosed by MtGox until now:

IRC has been very noisy for the last couple of days due to a DDoS against Freenode and BTC withdrawal issues.  Last report I got was Sunday.  They were processing SEPA withdrawals from 2013-12-30.

What I believe was the root cause of the BTC withdrawal problems has been removed.  It can only get better from here.  But MtGox have a lot of cleaning up to do, because their database of unspent coins contain a lot of coins which have been spent, and may lack a lot of coins (txid:txout references) which are unspent.  If I am right, this is a very complex issue and not easy to clean up.  I'd guess a couple days more of problems until everything is sorted out and accounted for.  I will leave it up to MtGox to disclose the details.

I tried a cheap bank which used Citibank in London as intermediate for sending SEPA transfers. (I didn't know at the time I signed up.)  When I tried to transfer a deposit to Intersango on the first day, the bank told me Citibank refused to process my transfer due to U.S. sanctions.  Intersango isn't on the list either.  I reported the bank to the Norwegian Financial Authority for imposing arbitrary restrictions on money transfer, and the bank contacted me right back and offered a settlement, but that's another story.  I was a customer of this bank for one day only.

Citibank Japan no longer accept withdrawals from MtGox either, btw.  According to reports in this thread.

Anyhow, I think the Bitinstant case is a hint to why transfers are blocked, and why Mark haven't been allowed to talk about it.  I don't know why the 5% option works (5% is due to 2x currency conversion fees, it is not a MtGox fee), but I know the method is very limited.  I frequently get reports from European users getting their money after only four days by this option.  Is it slower for U.S. users?  It should be slow for everyone now, since it is restricted by the same 100M JPY limit that limits as Japanese domestic transfers.

To those of you who are insulting me: I will only answer your questions after you have sent me an apology signed by your mum.  My finger has become very attracted to the ignore button as well, and I may not see your apology.  Sorry about that.

Read two pages back.  This is the latest information I have.

Please read the thread you are posting in before replying, and you would know the answer already.  I have lost count of how many times I this question has been answered.  Short story: Daily bank transfer limits.

Let me repeat my favourite quote:
But, hey!  You are free to waste your own money.

I'm in!  I won a similar bet on betsofbitco.in that MtGox would be sold or closed by the end of 2013, but this didn't happen either.

Of course you report facts, but you are omitting important facts as well.  Please read my answer again for the explanation of the delay.

Deposits of course.  Every time you sell, you sell to someone who deposited money at some time.  (Or from someone who sold BTC to someone who deposited BTC at some time, etc, for many iterations.)

This is how every exchange with an order book works.

He either withdrew via International wire (not SEPA) or he had another withdrawal complete successfully for the last 20 days.  Last time I heard MtGox were processing SEPA withdrawals initiated at 2013-12-30.  The reasons for the delays (SEPA and JPY) have been fully explained here many times, but please don't let it stop you from inventing your own.  It tricks weak souls into overbidding, making arbitrage very profitable. 

This is impossible to know.  MtGox publish a list of transactions delayed for more than two hours, but does not publish which of the outputs are change (back to a new address owned by MtGox), and which is the withdrawal.  They often use withdrawals to consolidate dust into larger chunks, so the change tend to be largish.  On the same list are deposits to addresses belonging to imported private keys, and we have no way to separate those from the withdrawal transactions.

Reminds me of this quote:
If the SEC is where you complain on the US government, then please go on!

Yes, it is.  The SI system already help you remember the number of decimal places, and even currencies adopt it.  Think of a cent as a centieuro.  Creating a new one is just confusing.

And here it is.  The transaction queue has been decreasing for the last 8 hours, btw.  They could actually be working on it, as they claim.

End of December.  Will try to get a more accurate date tomorrow.  The FAQ only has useless information right now: Situation as of 29th January 2014: We are currently processing 20 days rule withdrawals. (backlog)

You seem to have intimate knowledge of MtGox's special bitcoin software.  Do you work there?  Can you tell us how they do this manually at MtGox?  It would be simple if they used bitcoind or something, but it can't handle as many transactions and addresses.

Many of the transactions on the list are deposits, btw.  Not withdrawals.  Deposits to an address where the private key was imported to MtGox are handled the same way.  (I assume you all remember the DoS attack when someone imported the private key to the correct horse staple address, trigging thosands of microtransactions which were never going to get confirmed.)  With the price difference nowadays, I assume BTC deposits outnumber withdrawals by a large amount.

There are a few long standing bugs in their wallet code which have led to BTC withdrawal problems many times, and the rumours say Mark wants a real fix this time.