sbut then again the Mt. Gox episode was prolly the most substantial event to erode consumer confidence? :\ jmo
MtGOX must have had little influence on the mood of Chinese speculators, since most of them could not trade there.Also the Chinese exchanges look "different" so the Chinese probably feel that "it could not happen here". (Like the US nuclear industry dismissing Chernobyl because "our designs are different".)
MtGOX is sometmes mentioned in the Chinese news, but I haven't seen any mention of Chinese losing money in it (wheras we still see much of that in the West -- e.g. in last week's "so long and thanks for all the coins" message by the Neo & Bee vanished CEO.). There may have been Chinese among the MtGOX victims, but I doubt that they were significant in number or money.
When MtGOX finally admitted collapse, the BTC price had been on a steady descending trend for almost a month, and that trend has continued unchanged to this day.
That trend may be due to many possible reasons -- the Chinese getting bored with bitcoin speculation, the steady stream of coins mined in China, growing disenchantment with bitcoin' long-term prospects, competition by Litecoin and other altcoins, and so on.
Whatever its cause, that trend, like almost every movement of the price since last October or earlier, is clearly a Chinese phenomenon copied to the West by arbitrage.
In addition to that trend, the BTC price had a sudden permanent drop by some 100--300 CNY after the first MtGOX announcement on Feb/10 -- but quite likely because Mark claimed that there was a "bug in the protocol", not for any implication about the MtGOX insolvency (which, at that time, was still vehemently denied by its faithful clients).
The second MtGOX announcement on Feb/20, and its final collapse a while later, did not seem to have had any permanent effect on the price in China, and therefore on the price everywhere else.
In addition to that trend, the only significant price events with permanent effect were the mysterious jump upwards by ~700 CNY on Mar/03, and the net drop by ~300 CNY on Mar/27 after the Caixin leak. There was a temporary "bump" during the New Year holidays Jan/29-Feb/06 (when banks were closed and volume was minimal), and another one on Apr/02--Apr/06 (when people were still wondering whether the bank part of the Caixin leak was real). The persistence of the latter bump is not clear yet.
In summary, I do not think that MtGOX's collapse had a significant influence on the BTC price since late December. China still defines the price, and they did not care much about MtGOX. For that reason, I cannot guess what will happen to the price if and when the Chinese market closes.
sometimes Bitcoin really is a get rich quick scheme. Anyway time to take the day off and enjoy the weekend. Looking back to the total lack of buy interest for 440+ coins and the grind down the last weeks, probably a good idea.