That’s it. James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, ended a 12-year search for a hard drive with 8,000 bitcoins that ended up in a landfill in 2013. At that time, the contents of the hard drive were estimated at $600 thousand, but the value of bitcoin was growing every year. Now, 8 thousand bitcoins are worth about $915 million.
The 39-year-old started mining in 2008, mining 400 to 800 BTC on a Dell XPS laptop. By 2009, he was among the top five bitcoin miners. Over the years, the laptop accumulated more than 32 KB of encrypted private keys. Then, according to the IT specialist, his ex was throwing out the trash and added the HDD to the trash.
Despite numerous attempts, he was unable to access and locate the device. In the end, Howells concluded that the information on the hard drive was unrecoverable.
Howells’ HDD had been buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste in a Newport landfill for more than 12 years, in all seasons and weather. By local law, everything in the landfill belongs to the city. Despite the fact that Howells tried to get access to the dump through the court, even to buy the site. Now, the landfill will be eliminated, and a power plant will be built in its place.
On the bright side, an American production company called LEBUL has acquired exclusive rights to develop and produce his story. Also released One Man’s Trash by Jony Pazu Games, where you have to dig through garbage in search of cryptocurrency.
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