Michael Shane, 17, was returning from school this week when he discovered a wallet on the street containing $1,568,291 dollars worth of Bitcoin.

The wallet contained a piece of paper on which the private and public keys of a bitcoin address were printed: giving the owner access to the wallet.

Mr Shane, who was aware of the current value of the cryptocurrency, immediately took the wallet to the local police station.

There it was reunited with its owner Charlotte Tribe, 28, an early investor in Bitcoin. Tribe said she didn’t usually carry the wallet keys on her person, but on this occasion was taking the keys to a storage deposit box.

Tribe said she didn’t know how the wallet came off her person, but was taken aback the kindness of the action:

“With all the sad stories in the news at the moment it’s easy to forget how kind and generous people can be. It made me think about what more I could be doing to give back to a world that has been so good to me already.”

Tribe told NFN that the generosity of Mr. Shane’s actions had inspired her to give around 10% of the funds to local charities.

— NFN's Oliver Frost contributed to this report.