While doing “spring cleaning” in 2013, a man threw his old PC hard drive into the trash, which joined a mountain of trash at his local landfill in Newport, Wales, England. But in a way he hadn’t thought of at the time, on the same hard drive was a wallet filled with 7,500 Bitcoins worth £500,000 ($665,000) in the early days of the coin. Now that wallet is worth $357 million.
When he realized this, he started desperately searching for the hard drive and has been searching ever since. For the past eight years, James Howells has been crawling through piles of garbage in a field the size of a football field in search of his $350 million needle.
“” (3-4 feet equates to about 90-120 centimeters), Howells said in an interview with the Guardian in 2013.
Howells continued his words as follows: “Right now I am at a point where I can either laugh or cry at this. Why am I not there with the shovel in my hand? I think I’ve come to terms with never finding it.”
After this speech in 2013, Howells accepted the fact that he would never get his fortune back. However, after a short time, he gave up on this idea and started to search for himself. Even now, he says he is hopeful that the drive is both accessible and readable. In a last-ditch effort, he has convinced the inhabitants of his local town to join the hunt, with the promise of millions if the search is successful.
The Newport council’s refusal to allow any volunteers to enter the area further complicates matters. Citing the ecological damage caused by searching the buried trash, the lack of a permit to search the trash, and the absolute uncertainty that the hard drive lies there, the council is not allowing anyone to search the trash mountains, CNBC reported.
Unfortunately, the Bitcoin wallet will be lost forever if Howells doesn’t find the driver.
Like most cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin didn’t allow you to back up your wallet in its early days. This has led to unfortunate scenarios where people like Howells lose the physical drive the crypto is on or forget their password.
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