A British man who accidentally threw a hard drive containing bitcoins in the trash has offered local authorities where he lives more than US $ 70 million to dig up a landfill site.
Reported by CNN International, IT worker James Howells got rid of the hard disk that housed the digital repository of 7,500 bitcoins between June and August 2013. He originally mined the virtual currency four years earlier when its value was small.
But when the value of cryptocurrency soared and he looked for it, he discovered that he had mistakenly dumped the hard drive in the trash. Now, with lost bitcoins soaring even further, Howells has approached the City Council of Newport in Wales for permission to excavate certain sections of the landfill site where he believes the hard drive ended. Unfortunately his request was rejected.
“I am offering to donate 25% or US $ 71.7 million to the city of Newport to distribute to all the local residents living in Newport if I find and recover bitcoins. This will generate approximately US $ 239 per person for the entire city (316k). population). Unfortunately they turned down the offer and won’t even have a direct discussion with me on this issue. ” Howell said.
There’s One Way to Find Out Howells’ Bitcoin
Even so, Howells recently claimed he might be able to find out where the hard drive is, which is currently piled up among a large and large pile of garbage.
“The plan will be to excavate a specific area of the landfill based on a grid reference system and restore the hard drive while complying with all safety and environmental standards. The drive will then be presented to a data recovery specialist who can rebuild the drive from scratch with new parts and try to recover small data. which I need to access bitcoin. ” He told CNN
Howells first discovered that the hard drive was lost when the bitcoins were worth an estimated US $ 9 million. Based on current rates, he estimated the value to be around $ 273 million.
Meanwhile Bitcoin price hit an all-time high in the last few days and is now trading around US $ 37,000 per chip.
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