Mt.Gox, the largest exchange for the online digital currency, was forced to halt withdrawals (but not trading) this morning. Due to an increase in withdrawal requests the exchange's systems had technical problems and in order "to understand the issue thoroughly, the system must be in static state," they reported. The exchange said it would resolve the problem as soon as possible and "apologize[d] for the sudden short notice." Interestingly this seemed to rapidly remove Mt.Gox's modest premium to the other exchanges and bring them all back inline around $700 as the price recovered.
[3]
As Max Pelham noted (Coinwatch), [4]
"People will be leaving Mt. Gox either way, the trust isn't already very high, and with this now people are going to trust them even less,"
"I think Mt. Gox is going to lose relevance even more now, they're not very forthcoming in their public relations, their technical problems and their withdrawal problems aren't going away. Even if they fix it now, the withdrawal problem still remains with USD and Euro withdrawals."