Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC.I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e....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.Here is the transaction where it starts to get interesting:https://blockchain.info/tx/478ea915aa3a2e54503c43e1c5659722b...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.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.Why take 429k and split it into many addresses each containing less than 1,000 BTC each?I'd like to see someone trace all of these coins and see if they end up coming together somewhere or show a pattern.