British man becomes overnight millionaire after recovering lost Bitcoin after 12 years

The man, identified only as Chris, invested £1,500 ($2,000) in Bitcoin in 2011 after a friend interested in stocks told him the cryptocurrency was going to be a "massive thing."

He bought the Bitcoin through Intersango, formerly known as Britcoin, one of the U.K.'s earliest cryptocurrency exchanges. When the platform ran into difficulties and stopped operating in 2014, Chris tried to withdraw his holdings but found that his account had been frozen. His Bitcoin was worth about £4,000 at the time.

"It was a bit of a shock when it happened. It wasn't really money that I wanted to lose," he told British news outlet LBC.

As Bitcoin's price soared over the following decade, he watched the value of his inaccessible holdings climb into the millions. "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.'"

Golden coins with Bitcoin logo. Photo from Pexels

In 2018, Chris received emails from two Intersango co-founders asking former customers to contact them, but deleted the messages because he suspected they were scams. His wife persuaded him to try again earlier this year. On Jan. 20, he hired British law firm CEL Solicitors, which specializes in recovering lost cryptocurrency.

The firm gathered documents to prove his ownership and negotiated the return of the cryptocurrency. The case was settled on May 28, with all 61 Bitcoin returned to him. Bitcoin was trading at around $78,000 on Sept. 3, valuing his holdings at approximately $4.76 million.

Chris said his family's "jaws dropped, eyes popped" when he told them about the recovery.

Despite regaining his fortune, he remains worried about losing it again and repeatedly checks his account. He plans to keep some of the Bitcoin and sell part of his holdings to buy a larger home that can better accommodate his mother-in-law, who has disabilities. He also plans to throw a party and take his family on vacation.

Chris's windfall comes as official figures show hundreds of British cryptocurrency investors have made gains of more than £1 million.

HM Revenue & Customs said in August that 240 people reported crypto asset capital gains of more than £1 million each in the 2024-2025 tax year, according to The Times. Overall, 17,600 people reported £1.38 billion in taxable crypto gains. Men accounted for 87% of those investors, while 54% were aged 25-44.

Other early Bitcoin holders who lost access to their cryptocurrency have not been as fortunate.

British computer engineer James Howells has spent years trying to recover a hard drive containing the private key needed to access about 7,500 Bitcoin. The drive was accidentally thrown away in Wales in 2013, according to IFLScience. At current Bitcoin's price, the holdings would be worth approximately $585 million.

German-born programmer Stefan Thomas faces a similar predicament. He received 7,002 Bitcoin more than a decade ago but lost the password to an encrypted IronKey drive containing the credentials needed to access the cryptocurrency.