Bitcoin Forum

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/it-pro-says-he-threw-out-7500-bitcoins-now-worth-7-5-million/


Many people have a tale of a lost or broken hard drive containing some bit of precious data they wish they could recover. But perhaps no one on the planet has thrown out a hard drive as valuable as the one James Howells says is now buried in a landfill.

According to an article in The Guardian today, Howells threw out the hard drive, "rescued from a defunct Dell laptop," this past summer. "And then last Friday he realised that it held a digital wallet with 7,500 Bitcoins created for almost nothing in 2009," the story notes.

Howells, an IT pro, says his mistake likely occurred in mid-July, at which time a single bitcoin was worth about $90. Today, the value of a single bitcoin passed $1,000 for the first time, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.

Well that sucks  :-\

I really feel bad for this guy but I have had some stuff happen to me I bought a laptop with 6.3 bitcoins and that was like 1k at the time now thats 6.3k for this thousand dollar laptop lol

But ya 7.5mill feel bad for the guy

He's not an IT 'pro' if he:

1. failed to take a hdd backup;
2. failed to check what was on a hdd before binning it;
3. failed to physically destroy the hdd before binning it.

Not a 'pro' in any means of the word.

And total lack of awareness of his situation.

If he was an "IT Pro", one of the worse ever.

I have absolutely no sympathy for him.

Besides, I find the story incredulous.

I've read a follow-up article that states he is actually searching the local rubbish dump for it. Good luck!

Yeah I agree with the above. No pro at all, come on if one should know about backups it had to be him..

Wonder if that landfill now sees an increase of people searching for this harddrive. And I wonder if the story is true at all - we just have his words.

I also lost a hdd of 2000 BTC, it got shipped off Kenya, and now some blacksmith is using it to make necklaces to the local women. True story.  ::)

at some point some speculator may see the 7500 BTC as worth more than the rubbish tip and acquire the whole thing, then make a systematic search

I totally agreed. How can he be a professional? Even my Grandma is better than him.  ::)

doh!

many professionals are very lazy! ;)

you work to mutch on other computers and dont have time for your own things.

you think, ahh.. next day i do make my backup... but next day no time for it, you again think ok.. tomorow i make my backup... one day you hdd crash and you think you are a lazy idiot.

that happend to me when i lost source code of 2 month work.
i had to rewrite all the last updates of my programms for the last 2 month...

i just shutdown my laptop, all working like normal, next morning hdd.. click... click!  fu..!

Well, do you do backups now ?

Just because you're a pro doesn't mean you follow standard data protection procedures on your home computers. I'm a computer guru, and honestly only *some* things are backed up on my computer. If my hard drives die, I lose a lot of things--many of which are replaceable, and in 2011 after the mtgox hack, I guarantee you I wouldn't have cared too much if $200 worth of BTC could've gotten lost. Yeah I'd shrug it off, get a little irritated, and that's it.

Sometimes you just forget things. There's a reason why in a professional work environment, if you work in IT, there's SOPs and checklists you follow before throwing equipment out with possibly important data. With personal stuff, you sometimes just do a quick check in your brain and then bam. I'm a prolific ROM flasher on Android and I love continuity. While I've managed to flash my phones probably 100+ times, I've managed to keep all my texts from 2007 and on. I've managed to keep my Whatsapp conversations intact since 2010 except the one time just one month ago when I accidentally wiped my /sdcard folder. Am I now a newb? It's easy to mess things up, but if I were doing this for work, I'd be extra careful. We all know that you *should* do a Nandroid before you flash, or you should have multiple layers of redundancy, and have offsite backup, blah blah blah, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Sure, I have a number of things here and there that are not backed up that I would be unhappy to lose, but BTC7,500 when a "single bitcoin was worth $90"? It clearly didn't have that value to him.

Still, even if he had sold those bitcoins to Mt. Gox at the time, he'd have made 675,000 USD. A pretty good payout if you ask me. -_- Bitcoin is like the stock market in almost every aspect, buy low, mine low, sell high.

shit happens, some people are not meant to be rich it's just the way of life seen it too many times.

Oh god.... That was just painful to read.......

But on the brighter side, we all have bitcoin that's worth that much more!

I still feel terrible for him though... :(

Here is a wallet with 8,000 BTCs (all created from mining?) which is not active ever since 2009?

https://blockchain.info/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi

Is this his wallet?  :o

so disgusting, and I thought my situation was sick.. I sold 65btc a couple months back for 8k.. could have got 65k.. sigh

Its ironic that to get the hard drive out of the tip he will need to mine for it.

You shouldn't think about it too much. At least you got 8K in hard cash. Think about those unfortunate people who haven't heard about BTCs yet.

In the Hindu mythology, there is a story ( told to me by one of my friends - an early BTC adopter).

A few centuries ago, there was a King who ruled a small region somewhere in Central India. Warfare was frequent with his neighbors. During one of his war campaigns, the King and his entourage had to cross through a dense forest. It became dark, and the King ordered his companions to station themselves in a nearby cave for a few hours rest. Since it was not known previously that they won't get back to their homes before the dusk, no source of lighting was carried along.

In some regions inside the cave, the people could sense small sharp stones. They asked the King (to whom the terrain was familiar) what those were. The king refused to answer. Instead he just said "You will be disappointed later if you pick some of these stones and keep them with you. Similarly, you'll also be disappointed if you don't pick any of those stones."

They stayed in the cave for a few hours, before deciding to proceed towards the Kingdom. They reached their destination before the sunrise. There, they had the surprise of their lives. The stones which they had picked up were diamonds. Those who picked up those gems were disappointed that they didn't picked more of 'em. Others were cursing themselves for not picking any.

So... who should be more disappointed.... Someone who got 8K from his BTC trading or someone who doesn't even have $0.01 from it?

I wonder how many people are rummaging around that landfill in the hopes of finding that $8.25 million worth of bitcoins.

I was hoping to see some press pictures of people swimming around in that Garbage fill to hunt that HDD.  :D

Wait until the exchange rate hits $10000. They won't be able to keep the treasure hunters away then.

didn't he have a password encryption for his wallet.dat file? so if you found it, you'd still need him to provide you the password..