Yahoo Finance IN THE BIN: Man begs council for help after throwing away $381m Bitcoin
An English man has offered his local council a $95 million reward to help him find a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins, or $381 million.
Welsh man, James Howells, put the cryptocurrency on the drive in 2009 before forgetting about it and accidentally throwing it out at a landfill site in 2013. He had two identical hard drives and threw away the wrong one.
Bitcoin, which was established in 2009, was nearly worthless when he purchased them, but are worth a fortune today.
Howells believes both he and the council will win if it will allow him to scour the tip for the hard drive.
“The outside case might be rusted. But the inside disk, where the data is stored – there should be a good chance that it still works,” Howells told The Guardian.
He believes with access to the tip’s records, he could pinpoint where it was dropped and find it.
However, his bid has so far been unsuccessful, with the council claiming excavating the tip will cause environmental damage and break regulations.
It’s a call that has left Howells perplexed.
“I know I’m not the only person who has ever thrown out the wrong thing but it usually doesn’t cost people over £200 million [$A350 million],” he told The Sun.
“There’s a pot of gold for someone at the end of the rainbow – and that ends in the landfill site.”
Howell's story comes as another man reaches his wits’ end in his struggle to unlock the password to his $303 million Bitcoin stash.
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