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The reflection of bitcoins on the hard drive of a computer.
Thomas Trutschel | Photo library via Getty Images
LONDON – A Briton who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing a bitcoin treasure is once again urging local city officials to let him look for it in a landfill.
James Howells, a 35-year-old computer engineer from Newport, Wales, says he threw the device out while cleaning his house in 2013. He claims he had two identical laptop hard drives and that he mistakenly put in a bin the one containing the cryptographic “private key” necessary to access and spend his bitcoins.
After all these years, Howells is still convinced he can get the bitcoin back. Although the external part of the hard drive is damaged and rusted, he thinks the glass tray inside may still be intact.
“There’s a good chance the platter inside the record is still intact,” he told CNBC. “Data recovery experts could then rebuild the drive or read the data directly from the platter.”
Howells says he had 7,500 bitcoins which, at today’s prices, were worth over $ 280 million. He says the only way to access it again would be to use the hard drive he threw in the trash eight years ago.
But he needs permission from his local council to search a dump that he says contains the lost material. The landfill is not open to the public and trespassing would be considered a criminal offense.
He offered to donate 25% of the transport – worth around $ 70.8 million – to a “Covid Relief Fund” for his hometown if he manages to unearth the hard drive. He also pledged to finance the excavation project with the support of an unnamed hedge fund.
But Newport City Council has so far rejected his requests to dig into the landfill, citing environmental and funding concerns. And it doesn’t look like local officials are about to budge anytime soon.
“As far as I know, they’ve already rejected the offer,” Howells said. “Without even having heard our action plan or without having the chance to present our mitigations to their concerns about the environment, it’s just a no every time.”
A spokesperson for the council told CNBC it had been “contacted several times since 2013 about the possibility of recovering a piece of computer hardware believed to contain bitcoins,” the first being “several months” after Howells realized for the first time that the reader had disappeared. .
“The council has told Mr. Howells on several occasions that excavation is not possible under our license permit and that the excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area,” said the council spokesperson.
“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into the millions of pounds – with no guarantee of finding it or still being in working order.”
It’s not hard to imagine why Howells would want to salvage the equipment. Bitcoin prices have skyrocketed in recent months, reaching an all-time high of almost $ 42,000 last week before falling sharply.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that a San Francisco programmer was stuck on 7,002 bitcoin – worth around $ 267.8 million today – because he forgot the necessary password to unlock a small hard drive containing the private key of a digital wallet.
Bitcoin’s network is decentralized, which means that it is not controlled by a single individual but by a network of computers. Each transaction comes from a wallet which has a “private key”. This is a digital signature and provides mathematical proof that the transaction originated from the owner of the wallet.
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