You make it sound like they always have to do arbitrage just to run the business and pay for all expenses like employe wages and servers and the backed. They pay for this by the trading fees but then again if they have no money then the trading fees aren't really paying them anything but there own fake coins back.
I see where your getting at. They have little cash left they buy what little real bitcoins there is on their exchange when most of them are not there. If they where to sell all of the bitcoins that where left on their exchange and move it to bitstamp or another exchange they would then be left with cash. Move the cash back to mtgox and now theres no way to buy the bitcoins back since there arent any really on mtgox. So there are no bitcoins there to buy anymore since they sold all of them on bitstamp. Its hard to explain but I think I get it.
They only can do arbitrage so much until there is in imbalance. Sell some bitcoins on bitstamp get more cash buy the cheaper bitcoins on mtgox rinse and repeat but eventually you sold all the bitcoins with none left to arbitrage back on mtgox. So there would be no way to buy them back.
This must be the cause of not letting any deposit or withdraws go through the exchange it has squashed their cash flow. There backed in a corner what would you do to get out.
If it is as bad as you say then yes I agree there's no way out for mtgox its a vicious circle.
Can you explain how they got backed in a corner you said they weren't hacked. This would lead to my assumption that they where not generating enough money from fees to pay for their business. So the business was unprofitable why it didn't stop there is the part I don't understand. They could have shut down right there and pay everyone back in full. It looks like they decided to continue operating and if they did they would have had to use customer deposits to pay the expenses to run their business.
Theoretically if they did this since we don't know if they did they would hit the point where they spent so many customer funds that they destroyed their initial capital to the point where they don't have enough money to run anything or even cover customer withdraws or ever be able to pay to run the site any more to generate the fees to pay of the debt.
Now the fees don't actually give mtgox any more coins or fiat. The customer fiat stays the same in their bank account and the bitcoins in their wallet stay the same and don't change. The only thing that changes is the mtgox exchange ledger for your account. And the only thing that can happen is customers trade and fees deplete their balance owed to them in their ledger on there account. Thus mtgox would only owe you less because of the fees but the money in fiat and bitcoin stays unchanged. I see that just the ownership is what is changing and who owes who how much.
All of that can be said in one word insolvent.
The point where the fees became inadequate was when the FBI seized their USD bank accounts containing 5 million USD. The accounts weren't filled with Gox profits; they were filled with the total USD trade volume of the entire exchange at that point in time...
When you think of an exchange, think about millions of dollars flying from hand to hand between accounts. Gox only gets a tiny portion in fees and the greater the trade volume the greater the income for Gox. Essentially, each time the ownership of that $5 million total USD in the account is shifted around between users, Gox gets to keep a small amount. The amount that Gox keeps is used to pay employees, security, insurance, electricity, maintenance, taxes, licenses, all sorts of fees, basically every operating expense of Gox comes from this relatively tiny amount of that total. If you've ever owned a business you'll understand that it's absolutely mind blowing how expensive it is to run even a small to medium sized business; especially in the first 5 years as you attempt to pay off your investments...
I can only speculate about how they've lasted this long but I know for certain that a business won't run forever in a deficit.
Either they were selling assets (Bitcoin) to pay for operating expenses, or they were taking on additional investors and selling company ownership rights. It's not the latter so where then do you think they got the money to pay for the insanely high operating expenses that come with business?
The actions they've taken recently speak more truthfully about their actual circumstances than their words ever will.
That being said, Bitcoin should
never be reduced in stature to merely the value of it's exchange for fiat. Bitcoin is stronger now than ever with an intensely bright future... So much is right around the corner.
It's almost time to rip off the Band-aid and just move on.