Clifton Collins Linked Wallet Sends 500 BTC to Coinbase Prime
500 BTC, dormant since January 2016, moved from a Clifton Collins-linked wallet to Coinbase Prime on Oct. 20. It is the fifth 500 BTC transfer this year, with 2,500 BTC moved and about 3,500 BTC still in Collins-linked wallets.
500 BTC. Untouched since January 2016. On Oct. 20, a wallet linked to convicted Irish drug dealer Clifton Collins sent the coins, worth about $41.5 million, to a Coinbase Prime address after nearly 11 years of silence.
Arkham Intelligence flagged the transfer and identifies the receiving address as a Coinbase Prime deposit address.
Arkham wrote on X that 500 BTC from Collins' stash had moved again. It is the fifth 500 BTC transfer from Collins-linked wallets this year. Running total: about 2,500 BTC, roughly $208 million at about $83,157 per BTC.
What happened after arrival
The receiving address split the funds into 42 outputs, including 40 transfers of exactly 10 BTC each. The July and August transfers ran the same playbook: separate wallets, 500 BTC each, same Coinbase Prime-linked address.
The records do not show whether any Bitcoin was sold or who approved the transfer. Coinbase, which has also been expanding its stablecoin card partnership with Marqeta on the enterprise side, offers custody and trading through Prime. BTC can land there without hitting the open market.
A deposit alone is not a sale signal.
Who is moving the coins
Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau has confirmed recovering 1,500 BTC, 500 each in March, May and July, working with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre. Authorities have not explained how they regained access to the wallets.
The August and October transfers exceed what the bureau has confirmed. Arkham believes law enforcement is most likely behind them, an inference drawn from the size and similarity to the earlier seizures. Irish authorities have not publicly confirmed their role in the latest transfer, and the bureau has not said whether it will keep or sell the 500 BTC.
The backstory
Collins reportedly accumulated about 6,000 BTC in the early 2010s from drug dealing, split across 12 wallets of 500 BTC each. The keys were reportedly printed on paper and kept in a fishing rod case. After his 2017 imprisonment, his landlord reportedly threw out his belongings, which ended up in a landfill in County Galway. The Bitcoin was widely believed lost.
Why it matters
About 3,500 BTC, roughly $291 million, remains in wallets Arkham links to Collins.
For traders, the supply question is open but the evidence is thin: no sale is visible, and the destination is a custodian. Watch the 10 BTC outputs. How they move next is the clearest on-chain tell for whether this stash is headed to market.
