UK law firm just recovered £3 million in Bitcoin lost on the Intersango exchange over a decade ago

Disclosure: I work for CEL Solicitors, the firm involved in this case. We’d love your permission to share this story directly on the feed, as we think it could help those still affected.

Some of you may remember Britcoin, later renamed Intersango. For a brief period around 2011 and 2012, it was the second-largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. Then it went dark, and thousands of UK users lost access to their Bitcoin. Back then, a single coin was worth around £16 and most people simply wrote it off.

A California court case brought by one of Intersango's original founders, has opened the gates for recovery. The proceedings established that a significant amount of users' Bitcoin has been held since it closed in 2014. Only around 12 users out of thousands were ever paid back.

We recently helped a client recover all 61 of his Bitcoin through this route. He originally paid less than £3 per coin. They were returned in full in May 2026, now worth £3,331,618. The whole process took four months.

We know that there is still a significant amount of Bitcoin in the same wallet belonging to former Intersango users.

If you used Britcoin or Intersango between 2011 and 2014, it may not be too late.

We've written up the full case study here if you want the detail: [https://celsolicitors.co.uk/how-we-recovered-over-3-million-in-lost-bitcoin-from-a-defunct-uk-exchange/](https://celsolicitors.co.uk/how-we-recovered-over-3-million-in-lost-bitcoin-from-a-defunct-uk-exchange/)

If you have any questions or want to share your experience, please feel free to comment below, happy to help or clarify anything.