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Case file s984 · Modern estates · 2021
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2021
Playa Hermosa. Puntarenas. Costa Rica (3): Playa Hermosa. Puntarenas. Costa Rica.
Playa Hermosa. Puntarenas. Costa Rica (3). Rodtico21. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
23 June 2021
Place
Playa Hermosa, Garabito, Puntarenas, Costa Rica · Costa Rica
Field
cryptocurrency (MPEx exchange) · Business and finance on the timeline
Legal tradition
none applied in the record found; Costa Rican judicial police (OIJ) accidental-death inquiry
Historical event
Early bitcoin era (MPEx exchange)
Modern estatesBodies, bones and burialsNowLatin America

Bitcoin pioneer Mircea Popescu drowned off Costa Rica, and no heir or keyholder has come forward for coins said to number up to a million

Mircea Popescu was a Romanian-born early investor in bitcoin. He ran his own exchange, MPEx, which charged 30 bitcoin to register. On the morning of 23 June 2021 a current swept him away at Playa Hermosa on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, a stretch not safe for swimming. Red Cross paramedics found him on the beach and could not revive him. An American woman who was with him identified the body and collected it from the morgue. Costa Rica's judicial police gave his age as 41 and treated the death as an accidental drowning, pending an autopsy. Acquaintances said his accounts held about 1 million bitcoin in 2016. Others said he overstated his holdings and never held more than 300,000. Press reports put the fortune at about $2 billion; neither figure has been verified†. Bitcoin cannot be moved without its private keys, and no one has said whether he left them to anyone. ForkLog reported no information on the amount or on any heirs. No court case over the coins has been reported in the sources found.

What the law took from it

A fortune that exists only as private keys passes to no one unless the owner arranges for someone to receive them.

Record vs. record

Teletica (July 2021) describes the dead man as Polish; La Nación and ForkLog describe him as Romanian-born:

teletica.comlanacion.com.ar
Sources
  1. teletica.comPress
  2. lanacion.com.arPress
  3. forklog.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Bitcoin pioneer Mircea Popescu drowned off Costa Rica, and no heir or keyholder has come forward for coins said to number up to a million,” story s984, https://www.celebrity.estate/mircea-popescu-2021, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Modern estatesBodies, bones and burialsNowLatin America