Just like to present an alternative thesis for what is happening today/yesterday with MtGox.
There are a few addresses that can be identified using the blockchain that had accumulated a huge amount of coins, and that if they were dumped on the market it could cause chaos. Could that be what we are seeing now?
It is interested that apparently an 'unknown entity' has commanded 3 million BTCs distributed across 78,000 addresses. Im not sure if the entity still owns this many BTCs however. It would be interested to identity this person.
Similar anonymous entities (ex Mt Gox & identified mining pools) have processed: (just copying from the paper here)
940,000 BTC
870,000
690,000
660,000
630,000
580,000
514,066
500,000
479,000
442,000
...
with a further 5 entities processed amounts of over 400,000 BTC.
Source:
http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdfLet me speculate that it is possible that one of these holders has decided to cash out now to reduce his risk? Maybe he could forsee future problems with bitcoin and decided to take advantage of the strong demand right now.
Could the DDoS be a smokescreen for a massive dumping of bitcoin?
Maybe we can look if there have been any large transactions occurring in recent days, signs of someone moving coins to the exchanges.
http://blockchain.info/tx/5d9ef693d41cb3bb4c6d98e70ea8b2cc91be29a804245a06ec8761d9cddc103c
