To me everything points to the former, closing registration + extending payout time in a last ditch effort to retain value of the hyper-inflated currency...
Registration is open.
Furthermore closing registration is pretty much the very last thing a Ponzi scheme would ever want to do.
I think it's great to see the big fish of monero debone his own reputation for this. You get hundreds of thousands of dollars, I get something to point at and laugh. So this is win-win. Almost...
He is the big winner if he can cash out. Good guys finish last.
Someone wrote today that Ned is raking in $700K per week.