A man who lost access to his Bitcoin wallet in 2014, when it was worth around $5,400, has finally recovered it, and it’s now worth almost $4.5 million.
In 2011, a man named Chris spent about $2,000 on Bitcoin after a buddy convinced him it would become a “massive thing.” Chris bought and stored his Bitcoin on the platform Intersango, once known as Britcoin, one of the earliest Bitcoin exchanges in the United Kingdom.
Unfortunately, according to LBC, Intersango unexpectedly became unavailable in 2014, and anyone who tried to withdraw their money received no response.
Chris was among those who attempted to withdraw his Bitcoin after hearing reports that Intersango was having financial difficulties. But when he attempted to log in, the system had frozen his account. By then, the Bitcoin in his wallet had increased in value to about $5,400.
“It was a bit of a shock when it happened. It wasn’t really money that I wanted to lose,” he told LBC.
As time went on, he had to accept that he had probably lost the money forever.
“It was a punch in the stomach watching Bitcoin go up and up,” he said. “After a while, I stopped watching it because I thought: ‘there’s no point, it’s lost… I had written them off.'”
Making it even worse, he and his family ran into financial difficulties. Plus, he had to deal with his friends teasing him about “where his millions had gone to.”
Just when he had about given up, he made one more try to get the Bitcoin back
Just when everything seemed lost, Chris’s wife urged him earlier this year to contact CEL Solicitors, a company that specializes in recovering lost cryptocurrency. The company got Chris his money back within months. It is now worth around $4.5 million.
He says he’s going to keep some of the money in crypto, but will cash out the rest to upgrade to a bigger house so they can better accommodate a family member with disabilities.
He also says he checks the app where his cryptocurrency is now stored “every single day, 20 times a day” to make sure it is still there.
“I’m still worried about scammers and hackers,” he said. “You never know what might happen because although the wallet’s there and the exchange that I’m with is regulated, nothing really is regulated for crypto. And so there’s always that danger that someone’s going to hack.”