Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC.<p>I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at <a href="https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e30963c1ae00ddd95a8faebea6d0a007" rel="nofollow">https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e...</a>.<p>The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address.<p>Here is the transaction where it starts to get interesting:<p><a href="https://blockchain.info/tx/478ea915aa3a2e54503c43e1c5659722b42a784412423a05394c83a44affb805" rel="nofollow">https://blockchain.info/tx/478ea915aa3a2e54503c43e1c5659722b...</a><p>What's left of the 500,000 (429.9k) is split into roughly half and sent to 2 new address.  And then each of those address splits the coins in half and sends to two new address.<p>The end result is that the 429k was split again and again until the funds are split into many addresses, each of which now contain less than 1,000 BTC each.  I stopped following the transactions there.<p>Why take 429k and split it into many addresses each containing less than 1,000 BTC each?<p>I'd like to see someone trace all of these coins and see if they end up coming together somewhere or show a pattern.