Investor Recovers 61 Bitcoins 12 Years After Exchange Collapse, Assets Now Worth $4.8 Million
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05.09.2026 19:25
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2 min read
A British investor named Chris has recovered 61 bitcoins he believed were lost forever following the collapse of crypto exchange Intersango in the early 2010s. At current market prices, the recovered balance is worth around $4.8 million (approximately £3.3 million). Details of the unusual legal settlement were first reported by CoinDesk.
Deleted Emails and Bank Statement Searches
Chris began buying cryptocurrency back in 2011 through Britcoin, a local UK service that soon rebranded as Intersango. The platform ran into banking difficulties and halted operations in late 2012 before going permanently offline in early 2014 along with user balances.
For years, the investor watched Bitcoin’s price skyrocket, convinced the assets were unrecoverable. In 2018, individuals handling the defunct exchange’s liquidation attempted to reach him by email, but Chris assumed the messages were a scam and deleted them.
The case finally gained traction in January 2026, when he retained a specialized legal team from CEL Solicitors. It took the experts several months to reconstruct the transaction history across Chris’s old bank accounts, trace transfer paths, and prove ownership of the dormant deposit. In late May, the parties signed an agreement, and the entire cryptocurrency holding was transferred to the owner’s private wallet.
A Forgotten $400 Million Reserve
Media estimates of the investor’s original outlay vary from a few hundred dollars up to $2,000, but the broader implications for the crypto industry are far more significant.
Attorneys at CEL Solicitors discovered that wallets linked to Intersango still hold more than 5,500 BTC, worth over $400 million today. The existence of these undistributed funds is also supported by California court filings, where the defunct platform’s co-founders spent years disputing the remaining crypto assets.
Chris’s case sets a precedent: early crypto enthusiasts who retained proof of fiat deposits sent to the exchange can potentially claim their funds back, even twelve years later. The owner stated he plans to cash out part of the funds for household and family expenses while keeping the rest in crypto.
