Irish authorities have gained control of another 500 BTC, pushing the total recovered in 2026 to 1,500 BTC. At the time of the latest operation, Bitcoin was trading near $61,749, which put the value of the newly accessed coins at about $30.9 million. Officials did not disclose how the encrypted wallets were accessed, but said the effort received technical support from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre.
Third successful access brings yearly total to 1,500 BTC
This was the third time Irish authorities successfully accessed wallets tied to the same pool of assets. The network originally held around 6,000 BTC across 12 wallets. Investigators had already recovered 500 BTC in March 2026 and another 500 BTC in May 2026. The latest recovery, dated July 2, 2026, added a third batch of 500 BTC.
Europol coordinated strategy meetings at its headquarters in the Netherlands and assisted with decrypting wallet access. The report says that technical help from Europol was crucial in allowing Irish authorities to enter the encrypted wallets. No extra operational details were released.
The wallet trail leads back to Clifton Collins
The investigation traces the wallets to Clifton Collins, a Dublin native convicted in 2017 for large-scale cannabis cultivation in three regions. Reports say Collins accumulated about 6,000 BTC between late 2011 and early 2012, when Bitcoin was worth only a few dollars.
He split the holdings across 12 separate wallets and wrote the private keys on paper. Those papers were hidden inside the aluminum lid of a fishing tackle box kept in a rented home in Galway. After Collins was arrested, the landlord cleared out the property and sent the belongings to a landfill. The keys disappeared there. Collins later told investigators that he had permanently lost access to most of the Bitcoin.
Nine wallets remain inaccessible despite seizure orders
Ireland’s High Court classified the assets as criminal proceeds around 2019. At that stage, authorities did not have the technical means to move the coins. Blockchain records also show no wallet activity between Collins’ arrest in 2017 and the first successful recovery in March 2026.
At present, 9 of the 12 wallets are still inaccessible. They are estimated to hold 4,500 BTC, valued in the report at more than $275 million. Irish officials say they retain legal authority over these assets under existing seizure orders, yet the funds cannot be moved without the original private keys.
Arkham Intelligence is tracking the wallet cluster and logging each fresh transaction. The Bitcoin that has already been recovered has been placed into institutional custody ahead of a future liquidation. The report also notes that before this case, Irish authorities had liquidated only €6.5 million in crypto assets over the previous decade. The amount already retrieved in the Collins case is now larger than all earlier totals combined.