A hard drive worth millions is buried in a landfill, but the city refuses to let it be searched. A man fights for his property.
The title look is a symbolic image.
Why is he looking in a landfill? As WalesOnline reports, James Howells has spent much of his life searching for a lost hard drive for years. It ended up in a garbage bag and that ended up in a landfill in his hometown of Newport. The Welshman stored the key to the Bitcoins he mined between 2009 and 2013 on it, their total value today: around 500 million euros for around 8,000 pieces (via btc-echo.com).
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Buried treasure of Bitcoins
James Howells has now quit his job as an IT engineer and is working full time to find ways to access his old hard drive. He even hired the former head of the landfill to narrow down the search. Using AI, robots and an approximate location of where the garbage bag from 2013 is buried, he hopes to complete the excavation within a maximum of three years.
In order to finance his treasure hunt, he has now found investors to support him. Ultimately, if successful, they would receive more than 3/4 of the Bitcoins. The remaining 125 million euros continue to provide sufficient incentive for Howells.
Why doesn’t he just start digging? However, the city of Newport refuses access to the landfill and also refuses to excavate it. They justify this with concerns about the environment. Because there are also harmful substances underground. James Howells is now going to court. He wants to sue for the right to search for his property.
If it was successful, he promised years ago to donate ten percent of the value to Newport, i.e. around 50 million euros. He would also cover all costs of the undertaking and any subsequent clean-up work.
How did the hard drive even get into the trash bag? According to Howell’s story to WalesOnline, there was a misunderstanding with his then-partner in 2013. She casually took a gauze bag to the dump before he could check to make sure he had put the right HDD in it. Instead of the hard drive worth millions, a worthless but identical type was left on his shelf.
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