- James Howells of Newport, Wales, offered the city council a 25% reduction in its 7,500 bitcoins if it allowed him to dig the landfill where he threw them away in 2013.
- Howells’ bitcoin is now worth about $ 275 million, as bitcoin is trading around $ 37,000 at the time of this writing.
- However, Newport City Council told CNN in a statement that it was not allowed to excavate the site, warning of a “huge environmental impact in the surrounding area”, “without any guarantee of any discovery. [the hard drive] or it’s still working. “
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In 2013, British IT official James Howells accidentally threw out a hard drive with a digital wallet containing 7,500 little-known and practically worthless Bitcoins.
Fast forward, and at the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for about $ 37,000, and its store would be worth about $ 275 million.
Now, Newport, Wales, has offered his city council a vast sum of money if it allows him to dig a landfill where he believes the hard drive has been discarded.
Howells told CNN: “I offered to donate 25% or £ 52.5 million ($ 71.7 million) to the city of Newport in order to distribute it to all local residents living in Newport if I find and retrieve the Bitcoins.
“This would result in approximately £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the entire city (316,000 inhabitants). Unfortunately, they declined the offer and will not even have a face-to-face discussion with me on the matter.”
Scenes from the landfill in Newport, Wales, where Howells’ hard drive is located.
BBC News
Howells had extracted Bitcoin over the course of four years, when cryptocurrencies were still in their infancy and were worth very little. Howells threw the hard drive away between June and August 2013, believing that he had already backed up the files he needed.
He realized his mistake for the first time, he told BBC News, when the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed from $ 150 to $ 1,000, and his wallet was worth about $ 6 million in 2013.
After visiting the landfill, Howells told the BBC he thought he “had no chance” to recover his hard drive. However, he now has a new plan to find him.
Howells told CNN on Friday: “The plan would be to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a network reference system and recover the hard drive while complying with all environmental and safety standards.
“The unit would then be presented to data recovery specialists who can rebuild it from scratch with new parts and try to recover the little data I need to access Bitcoins.”
“The value of the hard drive is over £ 200 million (about $ 273 million), and I am happy to share some of that with the people of Newport, should I have the opportunity to look for it. Approximately 50% would be for investors who put in capital to finance the project, and I would take the remaining 25%, ”he added.
However, in a statement to CNN, a Newport City Council spokeswoman said she was not allowed to excavate the site.
She said: “The municipality has told Mr. Howells on several occasions that excavation is not possible with our licensing license and the excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“The cost of excavating the landfill, storing and treating the waste can amount to millions of pounds – with no guarantee of finding it or still functioning.”
Howells is not, at least, alone in his misfortune: The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Bitcoins in lost wallets represent about 20% of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoins – worth a total of $ 140 billion.
Wallet Recovery Services, a company that helps recover lost digital keys, told the Times that it received 70 requests a day from users trying to access their digital wallets – three times as many as a month ago.