(Newser)
– The 7,500 bitcoins that James Howells had on an old hard drive were worth about $ 9 million when he realized he threw the disk in the trash in the summer of 2013. That was bad enough, but the virtual currency is now worth about US $ 273 million, CNN reports. “I had two identical hard drives and I threw out the wrong one,” said Howells. “I have to laugh about it now.” He wants to dig a part of a landfill to find the hard drive and believes he has a plan to make sure everyone wins. Howells would pay the government of Newport, Wales, a quarter of the value of the treasury, more than $ 70 million. The city could divide its share among the population, which Howells said would amount to more than $ 200 per person, “if I find and recover the bitcoins”. A hedge fund is supporting his research, he said, according to Guardian, so it wouldn’t cost Newport anything. The hedge fund would have 50% of the premium and Howells would have 25%.
Howells, a computer engineer, said he is hopeful that the hard drive has not deteriorated to the point that bitcoins are not accessible. “The outer case may be rusted,” he said. “But the internal disk, where the data is stored, there must be a good chance that it will still work.” But a city spokeswoman seemed tired of the issue. “The Newport city council has been contacted several times since 2014 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware that supposedly contains bitcoins,” she said. The cost of the excavation “can amount to millions of pounds – without any guarantee of finding it or still functioning”. The licensing license does not allow for excavations, she said, and there would also be an environmental cost for the project. Howells was very informed, she said. “We have therefore been clear that we cannot help you in this matter.” (Read more stories about bitcoins.)