"A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m. James Howells's hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins - which is a virtual form of currency for use online. It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out. But this week, a single bitcoin's value hit $1,000 (£613) for the first time. It means Mr Howells's collection is now worth $7.5m (£4.6m). A few years ago Mr Howells, who works in IT, had dismantled his computer after spilling a drink on it. "I stored a couple of parts away like the hard drive, and the rest of the bits and pieces which were still working I sold for spares," he told BBC Radio Wales. "I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought - totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house." ""Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment - I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it... so it got thrown in the bin." Mr Howells later realised what was left on the hard drive." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289
You are not supposed to throw electrical items into the dustbin - you should take them to a recycling centre. How many people will now be buying metal detectors and trying to determine which landill site the computer drive resides?
He's a numpty, I still have every hard drive I have ever owned about 80 of them I think, not sure how many still work but I still have them Can you imagine the pain he is in And searching landfill like that how will he ever know the drive is his even if he falls over one?
Addendum : He could find lots of drives, after being in landfill many will not work which means he needs forensic data recovery, so lets say he finds ten drives and does not know which is his, you are talking 10 grand or more in data recovery charges from dead drives, I'm guessing slightly based on old numbers but I would not expect to be too far out.
He certainly is a numpty if the story is true. And just as big a numpty if it is not true. The value of Bitcoins has certainly multiplied but I think they must have been at least worth a few thousand when he first got them, so stupid to just store the drive in a drawer. The bubble created by Bitcoins is sure to burst at some point and those that invested in the currency because their own currency was devalued will lose at a second time.
