Man regains access to forgotten bitcoins after 12 years, becomes a millionaire
A UK man whose cryptocurrency account was frozen in 2014 has finally regained access to his bitcoins, now worth several million dollars.
A British man, identified only as Chris, bought Bitcoin in 2011 for about £1,500, or roughly $2,000, after a friend convinced him of the new cryptocurrency's potential. The story was reported by IFLScience, citing British broadcaster LBC.
Account frozen
The cryptocurrency was held on a platform called Intersango, formerly known as Britcoin. In 2014, when the value of his holdings had grown to around $5,400, Chris tried to withdraw the funds but discovered his account had been frozen. Because the company was not regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, he had virtually no way to recover his money. For years afterward, he could only watch Bitcoin's price swing wildly, eventually giving up tracking it altogether, believing the money was gone for good.
A wife's encouragement
Earlier this year, Chris's wife encouraged him to try again to regain access to the account. He contacted a company that specializes in recovering lost or inaccessible cryptocurrency, and within a few months specialists managed to restore his funds. By that time, his original investment had grown to roughly £3.3 million, or $4.48 million, making Chris a millionaire more than a decade after he had assumed the money was lost.
Chris plans to use part of the recovered funds to buy a larger house adapted to the health needs of his wife's mother, while leaving the rest invested in Bitcoin. He now checks his crypto wallet regularly to make sure the funds remain in place. Similar stories have made headlines before — Briton James Howells is still trying to recover a hard drive with lost bitcoins he accidentally threw away, while programmer Stefan Thomas has only a few password attempts left to access his valuable crypto wallet.
