You're right, this is purely speculation. But it's kind of hard to believe that the original owner who put years into this site would just let it die like this.
I'm more inclined to believe he sold it for a profit and retired. But again, all of this is just speculation.
Since the freebitco did not announce officially whether the site is sold or not and also no official wordings from them regarding the current issues the users are facing at the site. This means it gives chance to everyone to just speculate and assume whatever they feel like. Also there are number of times it has been speculated that freebitco has sold and there is no official deny to that statement too. Infact there is no official wording on anything here for quite sometime and it just give people to say whatever they think or feel like.