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Points of Focus
- A British investor recovered 61 Bitcoin worth 3.3 million pounds after 12 years.
- A single wallet may hold 5,500 more Bitcoin from the same collapsed exchange.
- Lawyers are urging other former customers of the exchange to come forward.
A British investor known only as “Chris” recovered 61 Bitcoin (BTC) worth about 3.3 million British pounds, more than a decade after losing access when Intersango, the United Kingdom’s first Bitcoin exchange, collapsed in 2014.
BREAKING: A British man just became a millionaire after recovering Bitcoin he lost 12 years ago.
Chris bought Bitcoin in 2011 through the UK's first exchange, Intersango, which collapsed in 2014, locking him out of his coins.
After years of failed attempts, lawyers at CEL… pic.twitter.com/qJtrchGULy
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) August 30, 2026
Behind his individual recovery sits a considerably larger figure: Lawyers believe a single wallet tied to the same defunct exchange may hold thousands more Bitcoin still waiting to be claimed.
Bitcoin bought in 2011 was lost when Intersango collapsed
Chris bought his coins for 1,500 pounds in December 2011, when Bitcoin traded at 2.94 pounds, through Britcoin, later renamed Intersango.
The exchange’s website went down in 2014, freezing his balance at roughly 4,000 pounds. In 2018, two of Intersango’s former co-founders emailed former customers asking them to get in touch. Chris dismissed the messages as likely scams and deleted them.
He only pursued the funds after his wife encouraged him to contact CEL Solicitors earlier this year. The firm’s director of financial litigation, Ryan Sweetnam, gathered bank records, ownership documentation, and filings from related United States court proceedings to establish Chris’ claim.
The case resolved through negotiation rather than a contested hearing, with the coins returned by May 2026.
5,500 more Bitcoin may sit in a single unclaimed wallet
The detail worth more attention than Chris’ story: CEL Solicitors’ sister’s tracing company used blockchain analysis software to identify a single wallet believed to hold over 5,500 BTC connected to former Intersango users, worth around 500 million pounds at current prices.
Sweetnam told LBC that the figure traces to allegations made during an ongoing legal dispute among Intersango’s former co-founders, not an independently confirmed fact, a distinction worth stating plainly rather than repeating the number as settled.
Sweetnam has publicly urged other former Britcoin and Intersango customers to come forward, framing Chris’ case explicitly as a template rather than an isolated event. “Hundreds of millions of pounds are still sitting in a wallet capable of being returned,” he said.
Bitcoin exchange customers had no regulatory recourse
Intersango operated before UK Financial Conduct Authority oversight extended to cryptocurrency exchanges, meaning affected customers had no regulatory body to appeal to and no formal compensation scheme when the platform shut down.
Recovery depended entirely on private legal tracing rather than any government-backed process. This gap left the fate of thousands of Bitcoin resting on whether individual customers happened to pursue a claim.
Bitcoin recovery funds a larger home for Chris’ family
Chris, who has asked to remain anonymous, described watching Bitcoin’s price climb for over a decade without access to his holdings as “a punch in the stomach.”
He plans to put part of the recovered value toward a larger home for a family member with disabilities while holding the remainder of his Bitcoin rather than selling it in full.
Sweetnam’s message to anyone who once held funds on Britcoin or Intersango was direct: The wallet identified by his firm’s tracing team is still there and still capable of being returned.
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