well, my speculation as to the announcement was off, but the announcement is still consistent with what I believe to be happening. the announcement was carefully worded and certainly has nothing to do with malleability. "security problems" and "technical challenges" is not mentioned as having anything to do with malleability or hacking, and could easily be referring to financial security and order fulfillment technical challenges.

the office building move due to security problems is worrisome though. certainly no one walked in with a gun and stole the btc. even if they did, moving office buildings is not a solution.

so what is "moving back into the old office" a solution to?

1) not being able to afford the new facility anymore (a move as part of a business plan to get back on track financially). this is a sudden move, and it seems odd that it coincides with the downtime. it seems like they would just move back quietly when no one was looking if financial hard times had been building (which was my speculation). this is more indicative of a sudden, unexpected financial loss... perhaps the malleability issue really is at the core and mt gox had a huge qty of coins stolen at nearly the same time as SR2.0. the idea that they really were hacked lines up with this action, as much as i doubted it to be true. i guess they wouldn't want to announce a huge loss through hacking since it would demolish the exchange immediately.

2) i think, very unfortunately, that this moving offices lines up better with my original speculation - due solely to the cryptic references to the japanese gov't meetings, and "making sure they were doing everything in accordance with local law." this just doesn't fit the hacking and sudden loss of coins theory very well (they may have gone to the authorities over it... but "following all laws"? what could they be doing, putting out a hit on the theives?). what does fit it well?

Bankruptcy.

bankruptcy with a gov't contingency that they can attempt to still operate the exchange in order to attempt pay back whatever portion of (apparently unpayable) debt they can manage. in bankruptcy, existing nonessential assets are seized, often the leadership is replaced (watch for a mention of staff leaving or Mark leaving), and the company is allowed to operate once again. Unfortunately, the bankruptcy plan process can take a while - perhaps longer than they thought?