Man Who Threw Away Hard Drive With Over $700 Million In Bitcoin Wants To Buy Entire Landfill
Since James Howells has gained notoriety for his unrelenting efforts to retrieve a hard drive full of bitcoins that he once threw away and that are now worth a fortune, you are most likely already familiar with his name. Less than a month ago, we reported that after 12 years of failed attempts, the man who threw away a hard drive containing millions of euros (in January it was worth 742 million euros) in bitcoins has had to give up.
But before he gives up, he has a new idea, according to the Guardian: he's considering buying the entire landfill after losing a case to force Newport City Council to let him search the landfill for the accidentally discarded hard drive.
He believes his hard drive must be in a municipal landfill in a town in South Wales. After James Howells lost a High Court case last month to force Newport City Council to let him search the landfill for the hard drive, here's the plan.
It is also worth noting that the authority has obtained planning permission for a solar park on part of the land. In an interview this morning, Howells said he was “quite surprised” to hear about the closure plan.
The reason is a contradiction: “[The council] argued before the High Court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a significant detrimental impact on the people of Newport, while at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.”
After hearing this, the man said that if Newport City Council was willing, he would likely be interested in purchasing the landfill “as is” and claimed he had discussed “this option with investment partners and it is on the table.”
Welshman James Howells has been trying for years to find an old hard drive containing billions of dollars worth of bitcoins. The hard drive ended up in the trash at some point, so the location Howells is searching is a giant landfill.
When almost no one was mining this cryptocurrency, this guy mined 7,500 bitcoins in just one week and then forgot about it. According to information collected by the Hoho Information Blog, he had been mining at night, intermittently, for two months. But mining requires a lot of processing power, which causes his laptop to overheat.
- A young British man threw his computer in the trash, which contained a large fortune in Bitcoins.
The coins had no value at the time, and there was no reason to believe they would ever become valuable. “It was just mining for fun,” he said in 2009.
Half a year later, he spilled lemon juice on his laptop. He transferred some of the hard drive’s contents to a new iMac but didn’t worry about the Bitcoin folder. He removed the hard drive and put it in his desk drawer. Over time, he ended up throwing away the old hard drive without realizing it, according to the story he shared himself.