Court Rejects Man’s $354 Million Bitcoin Claim
A U.S. federal appeals court has rejected a Florida man’s request to get back more than $354 million in Bitcoin that he said was lost when police destroyed a hard drive taken during his 2019 arrest.
The court ruled that Michael Prime waited too long to claim his Bitcoin. Because of this delay, the government no longer had the hard drive — it had already been destroyed.
According to the court, for years Prime denied owning any significant amount of Bitcoin. Even after his release from prison, when he tried to recover his property, Bitcoin was not on his list. Only later did he claim to have owned about 3,443 BTC, saying he was a “Bitcoin tycoon.”
Authorities said they trusted Prime’s earlier statements, so they stopped looking for Bitcoin and destroyed the devices, including the orange hard drive at the center of the case.
Prime was sentenced in 2020 to over five years in prison for identity theft, fraud, and illegal gun possession. After his release, he said the destroyed hard drive contained the private keys to his Bitcoin wallet.
He filed a motion in 2024 asking for his property back, but a lower court denied it, saying the devices were “properly destroyed” and that his claim was made too late. The Eleventh Circuit Court agreed, saying his delay made it unfair to the government to compensate him — even if the Bitcoin truly existed.
It’s important to note that Bitcoin itself isn’t stored on a hard drive. What’s stored are private keys or wallet files that allow the owner to access their Bitcoin. Without those keys, the coins remain on the blockchain but are impossible to access or prove ownership of.
As Bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto once wrote, “Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”
A 2025 report from River Financial estimates that 2.3 to 4 million BTC — about 11% to 18% of all Bitcoin — are permanently lost. Around 3.8 million BTC belong to wallets that haven’t been used in over 10 years, leaving an active supply of only about 15.8 to 17.5 million BTC out of the 21 million total that will ever exist.
