A British man has regained control of 61 Bitcoin worth about £3.3 million ($4.7 million), ending a 12-year ordeal that started when the early UK cryptocurrency exchange holding his funds collapsed in 2014.
The investor, known only as Chris, first bought Bitcoin in December 2011, spending £1,500 through Britcoin, the UK's first Bitcoin trading platform. Bitcoin then traded at about £2.94 per coin, so he received 61 BTC. The exchange later changed its name to Intersango and shut down in 2014 due to financial problems, leaving his account frozen.
By then his holding was worth about £4,000. Over the next ten years, Chris watched Bitcoin's price rise while his coins remained out of reach, with the private keys still held by Intersango's former operators. This was not a typical lost-wallet case involving forgotten passwords or broken hardware. It was a legal dispute over ownership, not a technical recovery issue.
For years, repeated attempts to contact the exchange's former operators failed. Chris even ignored emails from two of Intersango's founders in 2018, thinking they were scams. Earlier this year, with encouragement from his wife, he decided to file a formal claim and hired CEL Solicitors, a British law firm that focuses on recovering digital assets.
The legal team, headed by financial litigation director Ryan Sweetnam, gathered ownership documents and court filings, including records from related US proceedings, to prove Chris's claim. Sweetnam told LBC the case was settled through negotiations, not a court hearing. Within months, all 61 Bitcoin were moved into an account Chris controlled.
The recovery turned a £4,000 balance he had written off over ten years ago into a multimillion-pound fortune. Chris told LBC he intends to use some of the money to buy a bigger house that can accommodate a disabled family member, and he will hold the rest of his Bitcoin long term.
Chris's case contrasts
