is this the reason for the drop in price?

Weird?

I'll admit, Mt. Gox crashing isn't all that bad. At least there won't be a ridiculous spread between it and the other more liquid options. Besides, Mt. Gox needed to get smacked down in my opinion.

As for the people affected by this bull crap though. I feel bad for that; no one should have their hard-earned money toyed around with like that. I'm sure we've seen this play out last year when USD withdrawals went to a crawl. Either there is a ton of incompetence afloat or a horrendous amount of scheming about. And those are two choices that just plain sucks...

Soon after they had their accounts seized and were seriously short on money, a friend of mine simply lost all his coins out of his online wallet there.  No explanation, no refund, nothing.  Just gone.  About $2,000 worth at the time (25 BTC).

What software is this? care to share?

This is curious. Just posted a number of withdrawals of various amounts. The first two smaller ones (<=1.0 BTC) went through quickly and immediately appeared on the blockchain.

Subsequent withdrawals, whether larger or smaller, have failed to appear, despite Mt. Gox producing a transaction hash and emailing it to me.

The long term history of their behavior has been honest, but it appears there is something seriously wrong with the their BTC withdrawal code.

Comment #27 on the article at falvinge.net (http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/04/major-bitcoin-exchange-not-executing-withdrawals-now-owes-clients-38m-in-disappeared-money/) seems to point to a race condition in their withdrawal code, creating transactions which attempt to double spend the same outputs. This can apparently be verified on Mt. Gox's api for their transactions.

This would point toward another technical glitch, rather than fraud.

BTC vs USD exchange rates are currently on a free-fall..... So something serious is going on...

It does seem to be the reason for the drop in price.  Whether the price should drop is not so clear to me, though.  Previously, when Gox only blocked fiat withdrawals, it was obvious that the USD/BTC price should be higher there than on other exchanges.  The bitcoin there were worth just as much, but a "dollar" on Gox was worth less than a real dollar.  However, if both the denominator and the numerator are going to zero, then what is a fair exchange rate between "Gox dollars" and "Gox bitcoin"?

Personally, if I had not abandoned Gox a year ago after they embezzled from me, I would be buying bitcoin there.  Although neither fiat nor bitcoin withdrawals are working as they should now, it's much still much more likely that you'll be able to get your bitcoin out of there than that they'll pay you in fiat.  If anything, I would think that this news should be causing a spike in the price at Gox.  Expect the volatility to keep rising there if they don't resolve this soon.

If this does turn out to be just a massive technical glitch, then the main effect will be to slightly reduce faith in bitcoin generally and thus drive the price down at all exchanges.  On the other hand, it will certainly drive even more people away from Gox, which can only be good for the bitcoin community in the long run, IMHO.

I just tried to withdraw my bitcoins and they haven't even shown up in the blockchain yet  Been more than an hour now.

Mtgox can't stop withdrawals as and when they wish. It is our coins! We decide when to withdraw. 

Gox: Teaching people the hard way.

I've been saying this for months insolvency means taking everyones coins with them......all your coins are mine...

anyone who needs to blow a load because you lost a ton of money check out my sig below