In 2013, James Howlls realized that he had made the error of his life: throwing a hard drive containing the access keys to 7,500 bitcoins he had mined in 2009, at a time when cryptocurrency was almost nothing . At the time, its loss already represented $ 7 million. Today, the value of its jackpot exceeds 700 million! Suffice to say that the computer scientist finds it difficult to turn the page.
A trash can $ 700 million
Howlls is convinced that his hard disk rests under tons of waste in a discharge from Newport, in Wales. He even believes that he can approximate approximately the area where he is, depending on the garbage collection dates. Only problem: the city categorically refuses that it comes to dig to try to recover its property.
Since he discovered his blunder, James Howlls has continued to offer more or less credible ideas to recover his hard drive. In 2017, he asked the local authorities to excavate part of the site. Answer: No. Pattern ? Environmental and health risks. In 2021, he tried another approach: to offer 25 % of the value of bitcoins to the municipality in exchange for the right to dig. Newport has once again declined the offer.
In 2022, seeing that his requests did not succeed, Howlls attempted a more technological approach: sending dogs of Boston Dynamics to search the garbage in its place. He had even imagined an excavation project at $ 11 million, spread over three years, and including the creation of a cryptocurrency mining center on site. The city was not convinced either.
Tired of refusals, the computer scientist then decided to bring the case to court. But a judge decided in favor of Newport, believing that his file had ” no realistic success of success ».
After these many failures, James Howells returns with a new strategy: buying the discharge, quite simply! The city plans to permanently close and cover the site, which would give the computer scientist a last opportunity to convince Newport to sell him the land.
Problem: nothing says that the municipality will accept, and even less that it will be sensitive to the arguments of the man who harass her for more than ten years with her disappeared hard drive. And even if, miraculously, he put his hand on it, nothing guarantees that the disc would still be functional after spending more than a decade under tons of garbage and humidity. But James Howlls refuses to give up. How far will he go to recover his bitcoins?
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