An Irish drug dealer has reportedly 'come to terms with' the loss of $58,896,100 (USD) worth of Bitcoin, and not to the police.

Convicted criminal, Clifton Collins had been growing Cannabis in a series of rented homes since around 2005. He bought 6,000 bitcoin with his ill gotten gains late in 2011 and early 2012, at around $5 each. Realising the value of these as the price of BTC soared, he split the coins across 12 wallets to reduce the risk of any single wallet being hacked.

So far so smart.

Better still, these were paper wallets, completely offline with the mnemonic seeds safely printed out. These were stashed somewhere no one would look, in the top cap of a fishing rod case kept in a home he rented.

Then things unravelled fast.

Collins was arrested after police found around $2,000 worth of cannabis in his car. He was subsequently jailed for 5 years, presumably not keeping up with his rent, leading to his landlord having the rented property cleared. His possessions were taken to the dump, and from there to Germany or China for incineration.

So although the courts did rule that the Bitcoin were to be forfeited, as they are were the proceeds of crime, the Irish state is not in for a windfall as no one has the keys to the wallets, it has had to make do with a mere Collins had codes to additional bitcoin accounts valued at $1.5m worth of BTC, that Collins did have the keys for together with over $100,000 in cash.

Remember people, if you don't have the keys, you don't have the coins!

If you work in recycling and have found a sheet of paper with 12 sets of 12 words on, drop me a line, we should talk.