Man Searching Landfills for Lost Bitcoins Worth $2 Billion

Recently, the Bitcoin rally, which has been breaking records daily, has been downward since the 6th. As of the 26th, Bitcoin has recovered to the $1 million range, indicating that expectations for Bitcoin are still ongoing.

Amid Bitcoin’s expected continued strong performance, a man accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 7,500 coins.

The main character in this story is James Howells, a resident of Newport, Wales, in the United Kingdom. Mr. Howells worked as an IT technician and mined Bitcoin as a hobby back in 2009. He kept the hard drive to access the Bitcoin blockchain in a drawer when he got a new computer. Sadly, he lost this hard drive and cannot retrieve his Bitcoins.

In 2013, four years after the Bitcoin price had skyrocketed in 2009, a person suddenly remembered their external hard drive, where their Bitcoin was stored. However, while cleaning the house, he discovered his girlfriend had discarded the hard drive containing the Bitcoin electronic wallet.

Upon realizing he had lost the external drive, he immediately contacted the Newport City Council and requested permission to search for the lost hard drive in the landfill.

In 2021, the Newport City Council reportedly refused, saying that environmental problems such as toxic gas leaks could occur during garbage searching and that they might be unable to find the hard drive he wanted even if they incurred the cost of digging up the garbage disposal site.

Three years later, in 2024, the 7,500 Bitcoins he lost are estimated to be $2 billion.

James Howells has been trying to find his Bitcoin for the past 10 years and has narrowed down the potential search range in the landfill.

He is frustrated because Newport City has not permitted him to search for the hard drive among 110,000 tons of garbage.

He proposed various plans to excavate the landfill to the Newport City Council, which owns and operates it. The idea was to offer a significant donation to the council in exchange for permission to excavate the landfill with the help of a professional search team.

However, due to stringent environmental regulations, the council refuses to excavate the landfill where the hard drive is believed to be buried.

As the Bitcoin market has grown, Howells installed CCTV, hoping to use a metal detector to scavenge the landfill for his lost external drive.

Howells has created a search team but may form a legal team to fight back if the council refuses.

In an interview with the UK’s popular newspaper The Sun in 2021, he said, “I still believe there is a chance. The outer case of the hard drive may be rusty, but the internal disk where the data is stored will function well enough to retrieve the Bitcoin file. As time passes, the chances of finding data decrease, so I will continue asking the council for help.”

According to reports by local UK media, James Howells hired an expert connected to NASA to find the hard drive where Bitcoin is stored. It is also known that the professional search team formed by Howells includes a data recovery expert.

This data recovery expert has a history of recovering data from a hard drive that was burned in a space shuttle that crashed into Earth in 2003.

Meanwhile,  On the 25th local time, Bitcoin surged to the $70,000 mark, marking a recovery. According to Coinbase, a US cryptocurrency exchange, as of Eastern Time, the price of one Bitcoin was $76,200. This is an 8.53% surge from the previous day.

As of the 26th, Bitcoin is traded at approx. $93,000 on Upbit and the price is expected to break through $1 million again. Experts have analyzed that it shows a significant rebound as the Bitcoin halving is approaching in three weeks.

Bitcoin’s mining volume is restricted to 21 million, and the reward earned through mining is reduced by half every four years. The next halving event is scheduled for April 20th. Bitcoin wallets are expected to continue to accumulate leading up to the halving.

Photo= The Sun, Wales Twitter, News1, smartosc