Clifton Collins wallets move fifth 500 BTC batch this year

Coinbase on Tuesday received another 500 BTC from wallets associated with Irish convicted drug dealer Clifton Collins.

The batch, valued at some $41 million, is the fifth such transfer of 2026.

Arkham tallies 2,500 coins out and ~3,500 left behind

The coins were from a legacy wallet that was first funded on January 23, 2016, and went more than ten years without sending a single transaction.

Arkham tagged the transfer, the address coming back to Collins. Arkham counts it as the fifth movement out of his stash this year.

The first 500 BTC were sent to Coinbase Custody in March, then worth some $35 million. On May 19, another 500 BTC ($38 million) was shipped to a different address.

A third batch moved on July 2 and was in Coinbase Custody within minutes. The fourth, worth about $39.5 million, was sent to the same address as July’s batch on August 28.

Irish police confirmed the seizure in March. Arkham believes law enforcement was behind Tuesday’s transfer, but no agency has confirmed that.

That brings the total moved out of Collins’ wallets to 2,500 BTC with Tuesday’s batch. The other addresses retain about 3,500 BTC, which is valued at about $288 million.

Tuesday’s transfer is one of 24 dormant wallets waking in October

Collins used money from trafficking cannabis to purchase ~6,000 BTC in 2011 and 2012. He carved up the coins into 12 wallets of 500 BTC each.

His seed phrases were on a single sheet of A4 paper inside a fishing rod case. In 2017, Collins was arrested and his landlord chucked his possessions into a trash heap.

The case and the keys inside it are believed to have gone to a landfill in County Galway. It was presumed for years the coins were lost forever.

The first batch was reported by Cryptopolitan on March 25th. Coinbase Custody is used by law enforcement agencies to hold seized assets.

“The Criminal Assets Bureau in collaboration with Europol gained access to and seized a cryptocurrency wallet containing 500 bitcoins, which are the proceeds of crime,” the Irish Garda said. It did not say how the wallet came open.

Cryptopolitan at the time noted that a defective key generator with poor randomization may have allowed investigators to work back to the private keys. The other wallets could open with the same method if the keys were from the same source.

Collins’ coins are part of a broader wave of old Bitcoin moving this month. 24 long-dormant wallets have woken up and moved 1,756.815 BTC worth more than $145 million, so far in October.

One of them, first funded on September 11, 2013, sent 411.45 BTC, worth about $33.4 million. Cryptopolitan reported on the transfer.

The wallet is one of those named in New York’s “Noah Doe” suit.

The lawsuit seeks to declare idle wallets containing around 3.8 million BTC as abandoned property. The plaintiffs don’t have the private keys that are essential to transfer the coins.