Hello my friend, did you bother reading mtgox statement? They couldn't handle all the clamoring for Bitcoin. Bored media? What rock do you live under?
A rock called 'reality'. Do you really think that these new customers will throw money into this chart? Please........and the media hype cycle is over. This isn't new anymore and the media gets bored easily. They were already getting bored. And pure hype/speculation was the only thing keeping this up.
An hour of lag is only going to make panicing people panic more. They see the price dropping and slam the sell, but it doesn't go through and the price keeps dropping, so the place the sell even lower, and lower, and panic grows.
I completely understand what you're saying. It would've fallen further and faster in real time. There are other mechanisms at work during the lag......tiny bot trades that attempt to put green on the screen and stem the psychology of the sell-off (only occurring during the lag, and usually working). I can post various links of data sets and screenshots (mine and others who've mentioned this). What normally happens during a sell-off is...the price rolls over, the lag starts and grows the lower it goes, hundreds of tiny bot buys (e.g., 0.02 BTC) keep the bid/ask up (much much higher than steam of sells) in spite of 100s or 1000s of dumped coins as a means to stem the psychology of panic simply by simulating interest.
Because everything has slowed down, these bot buys make it look like we're bouncing because people are seeing the bid/ask stick higher in a more pronounced way than if we were trading real-time. The bid/ask keeps bouncing up to these tiny trades (5%-10% higher than stream of sells) and that's why we always bounce back up so quickly after minor sell-offs. Yesterday's selling was too intense, but they tried the same maneuver.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1795308https://i.imgur.com/umRmL7b.png