In case of SR, it was particularly stunning how the brief flash crash (that did happen as a result of the news) revealed a solid underlying buying pressure that was lying dormant until then.
I wasn't paying attention to bitcoin then, but I would think that the Silk Road closeure was
good news because it allowed bitcoin to free itself from the image of "coin of criminals and drug addicts", and therefore became acceptable to the vast majority of people who would rather not get involved with those things.
But the messages of the MtGOX headlines are "thousands of investors have lost their savings by investing in bitcoin" and "even the largest and oldest exchange may close without warning and disappear with your coins and money". How can anyone possibly consider that "good news for bitcoin"?
It started the rally that led to the December ATH, in fact.
Perhaps the Silk Road closure helped, but that rally was obviously due to the opening of the huge Chinese market. Increased demand, fixed supply = higher price, isn't that obvious?
So much so, that the price crashed when
China put restrictions on bitcoin, and partially recovered when
Huobi and OKCoin found a partial workaround that kept that market alive.
To me it is obvious that arbitrage from the main Chinese exchanges has had a strong (mostly, but not entirely, stabilizing) effect on the price in western exchanges, all the time. For example, it was probably the main contributor to the fast recovery after the damage done by that 10 kBTC whale on Bitstamp. Huobi and OKCoin are large reservoirs that can absorb or supply coins to the (much smaller) western exchanges without much effect on their own price.
(Why do bitcoiners keep saying that the Chinese exchanges are all fake and irrelevant? It is like saying that Apple sales are fake and therefore the company is irrelevant to Silicon Valley...)