A man who binned a hard drive containing Bitcoin now worth £340m has hired NASA data experts to find his fortune and is desperately trying to persuade Newport to let him search the landfill. James Howells, a 35 year old IT worker and early adopter of Bitcoin from Newport, claims he unintentionally dumped 7,500 units of the cryptocurrency in mid-2013. The coins’ value was in the hundreds of thousands of pounds at the time, but it has subsequently risen to more than £200 million.
Howells, said he had two identical laptop hard drives, but one of them contained a “private key” needed to access and spend his bitcoins, which he accidentally threw away. When James was clearing out his office in 2013, he mistakenly threw out the hard drive containing the crypto riches. Hafina, his former companion, had already taken the trash to the tip by the time he realized he’d made a mistake.
He’s been asking Newport City Council for permission to search its dump site for the missing hard drive for the past eight years, and he’s made repeated promises to split a piece of the money if it’s discovered. He’s hopeful that Ontrack, the company that was originally employed by NASA to recover the hard drive from the Columbia space shuttle after it crashed to Earth in 2003, can assist him. Despite the hard drive being discovered in a dried up lake bed six months after the incident, the Minneapolis company was able to recover 99 percent of the data.
“I have put together a comprehensive consortium of specialists in the industry to counter all of the issues that the council has expressed worry about,” He said.
“I’ve talked to data recovery specialists who worked with NASA on the Columbia space shuttle catastrophe. They were able to recover from an exploding shuttle, and they don’t appear to believe that being in a landfill will be a problem,” He added
By the time the council chiefs decide to act, James fears that the value of his Bitcoins will have risen to more than one billion dollars. He states that the council is concerned about who will bear the costs if the hard drive cannot be recovered; nevertheless, James asserts that “it would be part of a signed contract.”
The search was expected to take nine to twelve months, according to James, and would be supported by specially employed AI technology. He believes the hard drive is in a 200 meter squared region and could be 15 meters underground, based on aerial images of the site.
“Newport City Council has been contacted a number of times since 2014 about the prospect of reclaiming a piece of IT gear purported to contain Bitcoins,” a representative for the city said.
“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds – without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order.” He added
“The council has also told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“Even if we were able to agree to his request, there is the question of who would meet the cost if the hard drive was not found or was damaged to such an extent that the data could not be recovered.
To sweeten the deal, he has offered to donate 25% of the money worth $70.8 million to a “COVID Relief Fund” for the city. He has also promised to fund the entire excavation project, backed by an unnamed hedge fund but it was rejected before hearing the plan of action.