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James Howells of Newport, Wales, offered his city council a 25% reduction of its 7,500 bitcoins if it allows him to dig the landfill where he threw it away in 2013.
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Howells’ bitcoin is now worth about $ 275 million, as bitcoin is currently trading with it.
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However, Newport City Council said in a statement to CNN that it was not allowed to dig the site, and warned of a “major environmental impact on the surrounding area”, without any guarantee that it would be found. [the hard drive] or it is still in working condition. ‘
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In 2013, British IT worker James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive with a digital wallet containing 7,500 min known and virtually worthless Bitcoin.
Fast forward, and at the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $ 37,000, and its store will be worth in the region of $ 275 million.
Now, the local city of Newport, Wales, has offered his city council a large sum if it allows him to dig a landfill where he believes the hard drive has gotten rid of.
Howells told CNN: ‘I offered to donate 25% or £ 52.5 million ($ 71.7 million) to the city of Newport to distribute to all locals living in Newport should I find the Bitcoins and recycle.
“It would cost about £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the whole city (316,000 inhabitants). Unfortunately, they declined the offer and will not even talk to me about it.”
Howells mined the Bitcoin over the course of four years when cryptocurrencies were still in their infancy and worth very little. Howells discarded the hard drive between June and August 2013, believing he had copied all the files he needed from it.
He first realized his mistake, he told BBC News when the price of Bitcoin rose from $ 150 to $ 1,000, and his wallet was worth about $ 6 million in 2013.
After a visit to the landfill, Howells told the BBC he thought he had “no chance” of recovering his hard drive. However, he now has a new plan to find it.
Howells told CNN on Friday: ‘The plan is to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a network reference system and repair the hard drive while complying with all safety and environmental standards.
“The disk will then be offered to data recovery specialists who can rebuild the disk with new parts and try to recover the small piece of data I need to access the Bitcoins.”
“The value of the hard drive is more than £ 200 million (about $ 273 million), and I’d love to share it with Newport residents if I have the opportunity to look for it. About 50% is for investors who raise the capital to finance the project, and I will keep the remaining 25%, ‘he added.
However, in a statement to CNN, a spokesman for Newport City Council said it was not allowed to dig the site.
She said: ‘The council has on several occasions addressed Mr. Howells said that excavation is not possible under our license and that excavation will have a huge environmental impact on the environment.
“The cost of excavating, storing and treating the landfill could amount to millions of pounds – without any guarantee that it will be found or that it is still in working order.”
Howells is at least not alone in his misfortune: The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Bitcoins in lost wallets make up about 20% of the current 18.5 million Bitcoin – a total of $ 140 billion.
Wallet Recovery Services, a firm that helps recover lost digital keys, told the Times it received 70 requests a day from users trying to access their digital wallets – a number three times higher than which it was a month ago.
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