… So it may be an indicator that Bitcoins are being pulled out at (possibly) an abnormal rate? I dunno. Just a possibility.
If that were so, the USD price per coin should continue to rise over the next week. Effectively making people prisoners while holding USD?
As long as arbitrage works, the price cannot rise above the common price plus BTC-e fees (0.2%) plus a bit for arbitrage profit. But they said that USD payouts are delayed, so those who arbitrated via USD may have stopped.
This should leave the others, arbitrating through other fiat channels that still work well, if any.
Perhaps we can judge the degree of panic simply by the price. If it deviates by more than, say, 0.5% to 1% from the other exchanges, something must be seriously wrong, at least with the fiat transfers.
I got worried when I saw the price difference reversal (BTC-e bitcoins suddenly becoming more expensive than those on the other exchanges). In any case we can conclude that arbitrage does not work as tightly on BTC-e as it does between some other big exchanges, like Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and ANX. The prices of those exchanges differ only by a small fraction of a dollar from one another. BTC-e is the outlier.
I must admit that BTC-e has always, with only very brief interruptions, worked well. Unfortunately they are so secretive that we cannot find out whether they run a fractional reserve or Ponzi operation. But exactly that secrecy and anonymity is one of their advantages.