My belief is that it's a combination of:
- The management and other tenants of their multi-tenant office building got upset at people protesting outside
- Karpeles got freaked out by being confronted
- Karpeles intends to deliver further bad news and sees things escalating in the real world
The new address is a mailbox address behind a security gate. No one can get in. Even if someone got in, no MtGox staff would be there. No other company there expects visitors in person so no one cares how big of a neckbeard army accumulates outside.
It is bad news.
An excellent post.
Your last sentence may need reversal. Running a large bitcoin exchange out of a well known location without much security was an enormous, unacceptable risk. What they are now doing to physically isolate themselves more from the general public can be seen as long overdue.
If they were smart/savvy they would couple this with a large increase in online contact with their client base, to compensate where it matters most. Instead, they actually
announced the "relocation"
before trying to announce & explain the latest withdrawal delays. Yet another bungled PR event.
Well, they're consistent. Gox is an "exciting" stimulus for the market and in that one regard they outshine most, perturbing the market to bring on spectacular highs & lows.
What I wonder is: where are their servers? Who monitors those? Do they even encrypt everything on all their hardware when they carry it from location to location, and when they sleep?
I hope so, but if not, an even more "spectacular" future may await...