A Bitcoin wallet linked to former Irish drug dealer Clifton Collins moved 500 Bitcoin (BTC) worth about $39.5 million on Aug. 28, reviving questions around one of crypto’s best-known lost-for
A Bitcoin wallet linked to former Irish drug dealer Clifton Collins moved 500 Bitcoin (BTC) worth about $39.5 million on Aug. 28, reviving questions around one of crypto’s best-known lost-fortune stories.
Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analytics platform, labeled the sending wallet “Clifton Collins: Lost Keys” and said the 500 BTC moved to a new address.
The transaction came months after other Collins-linked wallets began moving funds that had been dormant for years.
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Collins bought roughly 6,000 BTC in late 2011 and early 2012 using proceeds from cannabis sales, when Bitcoin traded for only a few dollars.
He later split the holdings across 12 wallets containing 500 BTC each.
Fearing hackers, Collins printed the recovery information for the wallets and hid it inside the cap of a fishing rod case at a rented property in County Galway.
After Collins was arrested in 2017 and later sentenced to five years in prison, the property was cleared. The fishing equipment was believed to have been discarded, leaving the Bitcoin effectively inaccessible even after Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau seized the wallets as proceeds of crime.
The supposedly lost fortune began showing signs of life in 2026.
On March 24, a Collins-linked wallet moved 500 BTC after about a decade of inactivity. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau said the same day that it had gained access to a wallet containing 500 BTC with assistance from Europol, though authorities did not publicly identify the wallet owner.
Arkham reported another 500 BTC transfer in May, followed by a third in July that was later sent to Coinbase Custody.
Friday’s transaction marks another 500 BTC movement from the stash. Arkham wrote on X:
“500 BTC just moved from his stash. Have Collins’ BTC been found?”
The blockchain movement itself does not establish who controls the funds.
While earlier transfers have been linked to law-enforcement activity, there was no accompanying announcement from Irish authorities at the time of writing confirming who initiated the latest transaction.
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