Well the whole Bitstamp craziness is happening because apparently a wallet was compromised so the Bitstamp staff have decided to shut everything down while they work on the problem which is actually a pretty sane procedure, as for it dropping this low I'm not sure but I'm fairly convinced it's going to be the start of something big with this much volume floating around.
I do think that one of the reason is because the price has been dropping in general anyway a lot of scared people are dumping all their coins which is why it's going even lower and why you're also seeing so many shit posts lately about Bitcoin ending and how the world is going to end etc. etc. I've seen this hundreds of times and it's always a number of people that decide to shit themselvse and go on a selling spree and are trying to convince others to do the same.
What's going to happen is people are going to be buying them up even more now the price is so cheap and it could well kick off a new rise, I'm glad something interesting is finally happening personally
Also, I happen to think that with the other markets everything is far too high right now and a collapse could be happening in this years first quarter because they've gotten the Christmas pump done now to make everything look good and now the whole system is going to crash.