A British investor told LBC that he regained access to 61 BTC after 12 years, which he had considered lost following the closure of one of the UK’s first crypto exchanges, Intersango. At the time of recovery, the coins were valued at £3.33 million (approximately $4.5 million), according to LBC.
The man, identified as Chris, invested around £1500 (~$2000 at the current rate) in Bitcoin in 2011. He used the platform Britcoin, later renamed Intersango, for the purchase. By the time his account was blocked, the value of the 61 BTC had risen to about £4000 (~$5400).
Intersango began facing issues at the end of 2012: the platform stopped trading in pounds and dollars, and by early 2014, its website was no longer operational. Users were unable to withdraw funds and received no responses to their inquiries.
In 2016, the British legal entity Intersango was liquidated.
Founders’ Emails Mistaken for Scam
After the exchange’s closure, Chris made several unsuccessful attempts to recover his assets. He said that over time, he stopped monitoring the price of the first cryptocurrency.
“It was hard to watch Bitcoin grow,” he told LBC.
In 2018, he received emails from two Intersango co-founders asking him to get in touch. Chris assumed the messages were from scammers and deleted them.
He revisited the issue of fund recovery in January 2026 at his wife’s suggestion. Chris contacted the law firm CEL Solicitors, which worked on verifying his rights to the coins.
One of the main challenges was gathering documents over a decade old. The lawyers needed nearly 15-year-old bank statements confirming the cryptocurrency purchase, as well as materials from legal proceedings in the US.
The process concluded with negotiations, without a separate court case at Chris’s request. He approached the lawyers on January 20, and by May 28, he had received all 61 BTC.
Chris plans to use part of the funds to buy a larger home and support his family. He intends to hold onto the remaining Bitcoins.
Earlier, in February 2025, Briton James Howells announced plans to purchase part of a landfill in Newport, where his hard drive containing 7500 BTC was discarded in 2013. For years, he sought permission from city authorities to excavate, but they decided to preserve the area, a decision upheld by the court.
As a result, Howells abandoned further negotiations with the authorities about excavation and announced the tokenization of rights to the lost Bitcoins through Ceiniog Coin. A series based on his story is set to be produced.
