Key Takeaways
- An investor recovered 61 BTC trapped in a 2014 exchange collapse, yielding a massive $4.4M windfall.
- A law firm negotiated the return via U.S. courts, restoring his access without needing a lengthy trial.
- The surprise recovery drastically altered his finances but left him highly wary of exchange custody.
Man Recovers Multi-Million-Dollar BTC Fortune After 12 Year Legal Fight
A man identified as “Chris” finally reclaimed his bitcoin stash after 12 years.
According to LBC, the man, who wants to remain anonymous, started his cryptocurrency journey by buying 61 BTC in 2011 after following a friend’s advice telling him that bitcoin was going to be “a massive thing”. Bitcoin prices hovered around 0.16 pounds ($0.22) and 16 pounds ($21.63).
Chris chose Intersango, formerly known as Britcoin, to make this investment. Intersango was the first UK exchange to offer pound-based bitcoin trading in 2011, taking bank deposits to fund accounts.
Nonetheless, at the time, Chris did not withdraw his bitcoin investment to a self-custody wallet, and instead left them under exchange custody. This proved to be a mistake, as Intersango shut down in early 2014, leaving customers without access to their funds and with limited options, as the platform was not licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
His investment had already more than doubled, and he described how he felt when he lost access.
“It was a bit of a shock when it happened. It wasn’t really money that I wanted to lose,” he stated.
Then he had to watch bitcoin prices grow, adding to his disappointment at losing access to his funds, but he had lost hope of recovering them.
“It was a punch in the stomach watching bitcoin go up and up. After a while, I stopped watching it because I thought: ‘there’s no point, it’s lost… I had written them off,” Chris declared.
Nonetheless, in 2018, he started receiving emails from Intersango’s founders to contact former exchange customers and reach out, but he disregarded them as scam attempts. Even so, at his wife’s behest, he contacted CEL Solicitors, a firm that deals with recovering lost cryptocurrency in similar cases.
Ryan Sweetnam, Director of Financial Litigation at CEL Solicitors, recovered Chris’ cryptocurrency, now worth 3.3 million pounds ($4.4 million). Sweetnam explained that the process was not as lengthy, but that it took 4 months for the firm to deliver all requested documents to U.S. courts.
“And so that took quite a long time. But in the end, you could probably describe the whole process as negotiation rather than having to get in front of a judge to get this one user back his funds,” he said.
Chris highlighted that “jaws dropped” and “eyes popped” when he told his family he had recovered access to over 3.3 million pounds ($4.4 million) in BTC, and now he reopens the app where he maintains them 20 times a day.
“You never know what might happen because although the wallet’s there and the exchange that I’m with is regulated, nothing really is regulated for crypto,” he concluded.
