The Irish Criminal Assets Bureau "cracked" seized 500 BTC worth over $35 million

BlockBeats News, March 25th, according to Cointelegraph, earlier today, 500 BTC associated with an Irish drug dealer moved on-chain after almost 10 years of inactivity. Subsequently, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) of Ireland announced that, with the technical support of the European Cybercrime Centre of the European Police Force, they successfully cracked a Bitcoin wallet that was previously believed to have lost its private keys permanently, and confiscated 500 BTC from it, worth over $35 million.

The convicted drug dealer Clifton Collins, between 2011 and 2012, purchased around 6000 BTC from drug trafficking proceeds, storing them in 12 wallets, with the private keys printed on a piece of A4 paper hidden in the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case in his rented home. In 2017, after Collins was arrested and imprisoned, the landlord disposed of the paper while clearing his belongings, leading to the disappearance of the private keys. Collins owns a total of 14 addresses holding around 5500 BTC, currently valued at over $391 million, with the remaining wallets still in a state of pending decryption.

In most cases, losing Bitcoin private keys means the wallet cannot be recovered or decrypted, as the nature of public key cryptography makes the funds permanently inaccessible. The media has now reached out to the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau and the Irish police for comments on this.