- An IT engineer is seeking permission to search for a missing Bitcoin hard drive in a landfill site.
- The device reportedly contains about 7,500 Bitcoin, currently worth over $200 million.
As the largest cryptocurrency saw an exponential growth in value over the past months, many people who sold thousands of BTC in the earlier years are probably holding their heads in regret currently. Likewise, those who lost access to their Bitcoin wallets are speaking up for assistance. Today, an IT engineer from Newport (in the United Kingdom), is seeking permission to search for a missing hard drive in the city’s landfill site. The Bitcoins in the device are estimated to be worth over $280 million at today’s price.
Over $280 million mistakenly disposed
The 35-year-old Newport man, James Howells, narrated that he mistakenly threw away the Bitcoin hard drive, wrongly assuming it was the empty device he had. Howells’ first attempt to search for the missing hard drive – containing 7,500 Bitcoins – proved abortive, as the council failed to permit it. For this second time, however, the Newport IT engineer pledged to offer about 25 percent of the Bitcoins value – £52.5 million or $71.6 million – to the city as Covid Relief Fund.
Howells also explained his strategy for searching the Bitcoin hard drive in the landfill site, and also the safety measures they will adopt to ensure the unhealthy gases from the site don’t escape.
Howells believes his Bitcoin could still be retrieved
“The way the landfill operated in 2013 was when a general waste bin was full, it was given a serial number, it was dragged off to the open pit and it was buried. It was also given a grid reference number,” the engineer explained. “So what that means is, if I could access the landfill records, I could identify the week that I threw the hard drive away; I could identify the serial number of the bin that it was in; and then I could identify where the grid reference is located.”
There are chances that the device, if found, may no longer be working. However, the Newport man said its inner disk may not be affected, which is the core component needed to recover the Bitcoins.
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