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Computer scientist James Howells got rid of the reader, which contained a digital store of 7,500 bitcoins, between June and August 2013. He had initially mined the virtual currency four years earlier when it was of little value.
But when the value of the cryptocurrency soared and he went looking for it, he found out that he had mistakenly thrown the hard drive with the trash.
Now that his lost bitcoin has risen again, Howells has contacted Newport City Council in Wales to request permission to dig a specific section of the landfill where he believes the hard drive ended up.
In return, he offered to pay the council a quarter of the current value of the treasure, which he said could be distributed to local residents.
Digital currency was created in 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or a group of programmers known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoins are basically computer files that are stored in a “digital wallet” on your device. They can then be used as a payment, with each transaction recorded in a public list called a blockchain.
The price of bitcoin has hit an all-time high in recent days and is now trading around $ 37,000.
Howells first discovered that the hard drive was missing when his bitcoin was worth around $ 9 million. Based on current rates, he estimates it would be worth around $ 273 million.
He told CNN: “I have offered to donate 25% or £ 52.5million ($ 71.7million) to the Town of Newport for distribution to all local residents who live in Newport if I find and get the bitcoins. “
“It would cost around £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the whole town (316,000 people). Unfortunately, they turned down the offer and won’t even have a face to face discussion with me about it.”
After discovering the error, Howells went to the landfill to see where the hard drive might have ended up. He told CNN at the time, “As soon as I saw the site, I thought you had no luck. The area covered is huge.”
However, he now believes he knows how to get it back.
“The plan would be to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a network reference system and recover the hard drive while meeting all safety and environmental standards,” he told CNN on Friday. “The reader would then be presented to data recovery specialists who can rebuild the reader from scratch with new parts and attempt to recover the tiny chunk of data I need to access the bitcoin.”
“The hard drive is worth over £ 200million (approx. $ 273million) and I’m happy to share some of it with the people of Newport if I get a chance to research it. % would go to investors who have put in place the capital to finance the project, and I would end up with the remaining 25%, ”he added.
A spokeswoman for Newport City Council told CNN that the local government has been “contacted several times since 2013 about the possibility of recovering computer hardware believed to contain bitcoins.”
In a statement sent to CNN, the spokesperson said the council had not turned down the offer – but was not authorized to search the site.
She said: “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.
“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.”
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