They were forbidden by the Chinese government to sell bitcoins, quote prices in bitcoin, or engage in certain other bitcoin activities.

Block 321522 took 36 minutes, but next ones were OK.

From the blockchain.info quotes, I understood that there was a ~40 minute gap without a block.

But, isn't the difficulty adjusted AFTER the block delay has changed?

My guess for the immediate cause of this drop is that the Chinese traders are losing interest in bitcoin and are selling to get out. 

The guess is based only on their dominance of the market since November.  Is there any other evidence for or against this guess?  Assuming the guess is correct, what could have caused them to lose interest?

If the Supreme Satoshi has only one eye, is that a left eye or a right eye?

Well, Alibaba is Chinese, and it seems that the price only reacts to news that matter to the Chinese..

Can we tell which exchanges are leading the drop?

IMHO, the coincidence of times justifies looking for a connection between the drop and the IPO.

For instance, could it be that Chinese hoarders (not traders) moving their off-exchange coins to the "Western" exchanges and selling them there, in a hurry, in order to obtain dollars for Alibaba's IPO?

Sorry for wasting your time... It is just some random QR code that I mangled with random cut-pastes on gimp.

There is arbitrage going on.  Depending on which exchange is driving the crash, arbitragers will mostly buy at one place and mostly sell at the other.

It coudl also be that small transactions are experienced traders using robots that post many small orders, while the bigger transactions are newbies posting orders manually.

The Bolivar maybe, but the Argentinean Peso lost "only" 32% of its value over the last 12 months, 22% since Jan/01.

Busy with classes and other work.  But perhaps it is worth repeating the advice of the wisest bitcoiners:

DON'T INVEST MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE

Graphically:

About 2720 CNY now on OKCoin. Price hasn't been this low since the May 2014 Mini-Bubble started.  That Mini-Bubble is fully over now.

Haven't we decided already that a sentence is a question if, and only if, it ends with a question mark?

Creditors started to sue him.

He filed for bankruptcy protection (the full name of the legal procedure) in Japan to stop those multiple lawsuits and replace them by a single lawsuit (that is the purpose of bankruptcy protection law).

While under bankruptcy protection, the company can try to produce a recovery plan to resume business until it can pay off all creditors.

Mark wanted that solution, of course, and sought to sell the company to someone who would keep it operating.

The first thing that the bankruptcy court must decide is whether the recovery plan produced by the company has a chance to succeed and pay off all creditors.  The court easily decided that MtGOX could never recover the ~600'000 missing coins.

That being decided, bankruptcy protection law says that the company must be closed, and a professional liquidator must be appointed by the court with the task of gathering all the remaining assets and dividing them among the creditors', proportionally to their claims.  

I don't know whether that is a routine decision in bankruptcy proceedings, but the prohibition to travel without permission is plain common sense.  Someone who 'lost' half a billion of customer's money would be highly tempted to run away.

I don't recall clearly the events in the US.  IIRC, Mark filed for bakruptcy protection there too, since he had a MtGOX subsidiary company registered in the US.  Either the US bankruptcy court, or a separate (criminal?) court ordered him to appear in person, he didn't.  Things were about to turn nasty, but then Sunlot convinced the person who was suing him in the US to withdraw the lawsuit, and the US bankruptcy court decided that the Japanese bankruptcy court should be the one to do the liquidation.  With those obstacles removed, Sunlot then hoped to convince the Japanese court to stop the liquidation and take control of all the remaining assets (including the ~200'000 "found" coins) for the generous sum of 1.00000000 BTC.

Needless to say, one should not trust anything that Mark or other MtGOX people will say, without confirming it with independent trustworthy sources.  Of which there is an acute shortage, it seems...

Should we care that the anagram of "Gleb Gamow likes anagram" is "Waggle Mob likes a ragman"?

Perhaps it was that tweet that @Walsoraj posted yesterday, about a famous Chinese investor declaring a large investment in Ripple. (Unless it was a hoax...)  THAT could have an impact on the outlook of the Chinese traders.

Amen!  

Did you know that an old lady swallowed a goat, then swallowed a cow, and did not die for that?

Miners want to make a profit.  If a miner bought their equipment for 1000 BTC in January, mined 1200 BTC with it, and paid 100'000 dollars of electricity, he invested 900'000$ and got back less than 600'000$, so he lost money.    Even if he loves BTC, he would be better off today if he had kept their 900'000$ in the bank; he could buy more than 1800 BTC with it now.  

Miners decide whether to keep, buy, or sell BTC just like any investor or trader.  If there are people selling for 460$ now, why wouldn't they sell too?


EDIT: they --> he

Sorry to interrupt, but would you agree with Ogden Nash's analysis that "the cow is of the bovine ilk / one end is moo, the other milk"?