IT worker James Howells got rid of the drive, which contained a 7,500 bitcoin digital store, between June and August 2013. He had mined the virtual currency four years earlier, when it was of little value.
But when the value of the cryptocurrency skyrocketed and he went looking for it, he found that he had thrown out the hard drive with the trash by mistake.
Now, with his lost bitcoin rising further, Howells approached Newport City Council in Wales to ask for permission to dig a specific section of the landfill where he believes the hard drive ended up.
In return, he offered to pay the council a quarter of the current value of the treasure, which he says could be distributed to local residents.
The digital currency was created in 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoins are basically computer files stored in a “digital wallet” on your device. They can then be used as payment, with all transactions being recorded on a public list known as a blockchain.
The price of bitcoin has reached an all-time high in the past few days and is now trading around $ 37,000.
Howells first discovered that the hard drive was missing when his bitcoin was worth about $ 9 million. Based on current rates, he estimates it would be worth about $ 273 million.
He told CNN: “I offered to donate 25% or £ 52.5 million ($ 71.7 million) to the city of Newport to distribute to all local residents who live in Newport if I find and retrieve the bitcoins. “
“That would result in approximately £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the entire city (316,000 people). Unfortunately, they declined the offer and will not even have a face-to-face discussion with me on the matter.”
After discovering the error, Howells went to the garbage dump to see where the hard drive could have gone. He told CNN at the time: “As soon as I saw the site, I thought you had no chance. The covered area is huge.”
However, he now believes that he knows how to get it back.
“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,” he told CNN on Friday. “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 which contributed capital to finance the project, and I would keep the remaining 25% ”, he added.
A Newport City Council spokeswoman told CNN that the local government official has been “contacted several times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware that allegedly contains bitcoins”.
In a statement sent to CNN, the spokeswoman said the board had not declined the offer – instead, it 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 that the excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“The cost of excavating the landfill, storing and treating waste can amount to millions of pounds – with no guarantee of finding it or still functioning.”