Bitcoin Forum

Everyone who is into bitcoin has heard this story before.
A guy cloned his hard drive and threw away the wrong drive in the trash and knows it was in a landfill site. Think they made a episode on the US sitcom series Big Bang Theory out of it.
But the story didn't end there as the person wants to have permission to excavate the site looking for this hard drive with over $275 million worth at today's price of bitcoin.
https://i.ibb.co/gPXnLPY/Nat.jpg (https://ibb.co/P9bSv9k)
https://i.ibb.co/SNx9Qsp/JHowell.jpg (https://ibb.co/b138HWn)
"A man from the Welsh city of Newport has offered his city council a 25% cut of his 7,500 bitcoins if it allows him to excavate the landfill where he threw away a hard drive containing the fortune in 2013."
source: https://www.businessinsider.com/man-offers-council-70-million-dig-up-bitcoin-hard-drive-2021-1

He is willing to give the city of Newport in the UK a cut of the bitcoin at a sum of $70 million so to be able to do this with approval of their local government.
This story has been run all around the globe at this point and has alot of people scratching their heads as to why he would need permission to rummage around a landfill site in garbage. Alot of countries allow those who want to go around their local trash site looking for pop cans for recycling or whatever they want to bring out of it. Since it is just garbage there.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-man-makes-last-ditch-effort-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-hard-drive.html

Call it the green initiate if you want but there are many who scavenge around in trash looking for those gems.
As they say: "One man's trash is another man's treasure!"

I am not sure what he is really up to?

Do we really think that a hard disk from late 2013’s still be there just lying for his owner to get hands on! I barely doubt that he will find it. The cost of whole digging up would be one thing and his claim of 70 mln is another, just wondering what even if he finds it and unable to restore the data on it?

Imagine the nature’s fury from 2013 till today; the ice, rain, mud and pressure and what not.

Who thinks that it’s still gonna be in at least poor condition to dig it up and run smoothly ?

It’s not worth it.

There are some very strict rules regarding landfill and recycling centres in the UK. The land is owned by a local council and they will NEVER let a member of the public go looking through any rubbish. Imagine someone going rummaging and they manage to get a used syringe needle stuck into themselves - this person could then easily sue the council.
This man unfortunately, will NEVER have any chance of getting his hard drive back

years ago, he already got information about the truck that took his computer(garbage) and where approximately on the site, the area it was dumped. so he does not have to excavate the whole site.  as he knows roughly what area in the site to target most of the work

the problem is the good ol' health and safety
because trucks are spewing garbage onto land and then machines then level/plough it down. meaning its a safety risk to have a guy in the middle of the big machinery and dumping.. meaning they have to shut down operations in one area to allow him access to that area.

some have said 'maybe he can rent out' the trashsites staff for a few days.. but this was not accepted idea as the fear was that a trash site worker would find the hard drive and just pocket it, and pretend it was not found.. until he moves to an hawaiin sunset beach to retire.
so the guy wants to excavate it himself

I seriously doubt that the data will still be there to be retrieved, because under ideal conditions, hard drives are predicted to be able to retain their data for 9 to 20 years. So I should say... a landfill are less than ideal conditions and his hard drive has been there for almost 8 years now.

We have not even consider that corrosive fluids will hasten the deterioration of the physical disc and also rust and the pressure that was placed on this hard drive with material that was placed on top of it.   ::)

It is a very good offer for government but few things to consider.
- Do the local rules allow to make approval on such activities?
- Even the request is allowed by laws, is it possible to recover a hardware disk which was dumped in a landfill for about 10 years?

Landfill is very polluted and there are many harzadous materials which can make harmful corrosion and destroy the disk. I think it is a hopeless idea and government might put it into consideration. It is good if they get $70M from the offer but the chance to find the disk and be able to recover Bitcoin inside is very very low. They can not arbitrarily break or adjust laws just because of small hope for $70M.

See if the greed turns solid evidence.

Shop is open. Toiletpaper.. Sulfo.

I remember when I first started getting in to bitcoin back in 2014 and hearing about the stories of both the 10,000 bitcoin pizza and the landfill story. I remember specifically sitting a a chick-fil-a and telling my buddy these stories and him not believing them lol. I’ve lost a few thousand dollars worth of coins over there years for doing stupid shit, but I can’t imagine losing this much. Would be difficult to sleep at night !

I'd offer to help this guy find the HDD for 50 BTC (he only pays if we find it). If he can show me the location I wouldn't mind searching for it, after all, why not. He can keep the rest, it would sound like an adventure.

Actually, the possibility of successful data recovery depends entirely on the amount of damage to certain files.

Even if you accidentally delete any data, it is possible to recover the data through forensics unless the data in that specific block where it was, has been overwritten again and again.

No problem if your HDD is old, if not overwritten then there will be a copy of your file from year to year. But once corrupted by overwritten, retrieving old data from that block is almost impossible.

Yes, if it's a gift from God surely the hard drive will come back to him or be found even if it takes a very long time, but that's highly unlikely because it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
And I can't imagine looking for something in a pile of trash the size of a football field that has been in a large landfill for 8 years, the question is that the trash can is a hotbed of all sorts of dirt and toxins and chemicals that can damage anything. what else it's been years.

And I don't care about that and also if it's allowed, because I think it's just a miracle to be able to find something not so big in a dumpster the size of a football field with a tall pile of trash.

but if he hires a lot of people and divides them into many blocks to search for it very thoroughly and also takes a long time, there's a good chance it will, and come back again if it's still his, and if it's not. in any way never will.

I cannot agree with you here.
First, the hdd is not operational so the life is much longer than only 9-20 years.
Second, the important thing here is the data stored on the platters, the condition of the platters is crucial not the drive itself.
Third, the HDD cast body is from Aluminum Alloy A380, used in the aviation, hard and corrosive resistant, the same valid for the top cover, rust free and reinforced plate and the rubber gasket on the plate has more than 10 years of life.

There is a small ventilation hole on the top cover with filters, so the HDD can "breath" when the air pressure changes like on higher altitudes but even if there's corrosive fluid leaking into the drive which is highly unlikely, the platters are made of aluminum or ceramics covered with magnetic "dust" which is coated with extra layer of carbon.

There are probably mechanical damages from the transportation to the final point, but since the drive was not in operation the heads probably hit only at one specific spot on the platters, creating physical damage.

I assume the guy threw his whole computer with the mounted HDD inside, if that is the case then the chances to recover the hdd are much higher.

If I was him I would Dig!

If someone greedy enough for money, hed found it already and never told James about it. Taking it all. 7500 BTC is just heck of riches, a person who knows the landfill by the back of his hand could find it easy as its been logged all the time. Dead bodies are even exhumed precisely where if they just knew the timeline.

If James only kept the private key he wouldn't be digging garbages.

I don't know how the things happen in UK, but in my country somebody would have been already taking that drive or computer in the same day and selling it for parts or simply the metal - either somebody working there, either (more likely here) homeless people living near the dumps.

So it doesn't matter whether the HDD can withstand the pressure or the corrosion. He's not only searching for the (plastic) needle in the haystack, it's also quite likely the needle is no longer there.


Quite sad story imho. He should move on. He should have acknowledged long ago that the goddess of fortune was not on his side and should have moved on...

Excellent point!
Would of gave it atleast a couple of merits if there were any available. Hopefully somebody else does.

Also was thinking since it was 10 years ago, ssd drives were in existence then so it might be one of those that have their data collected on the drive differently and I think last longer and in harsher conditions than one with moving parts.
If he had said what kind of drive it was (brand, type, year made) then it would of been more helpful in determining if it could be still salvageable.
Maybe in the countless other sources of this very same story he did but I only referenced the two I found the most recent even if a year old.
The hard drives in those army-grade laptops (tough books) which are used by the military and police officers should have drives that are more resistant to the elements or even a bullet & electrofrequencies.

Why are we re-discussing something that is already an old and worn-out story? Both articles from the OP are more than 1 year old, and besides, there is no evidence that this man ever had so much BTC in his possession, nor that he threw the HDD in the trash.

Someone who works in the IT industry (or has worked) must have known better that HDD is never thrown away (at least that's my rule) - because you never know if you'll ever need it or if someone will manage to extract some confidential information from disk. Who says a worker hasn't already found that HDD in a dumpster? It would have been much smarter if he had tried to find the disc without creating so much media attention - I mean the time when he discovered what nonsense he had done.

As far as I know, at first he was allowed to dig in the trash and look for a disk, but when he announced it in the media and when people started coming to the dump, the authorities had no choice but to ban further searches.

Also an interesting article on the personality of James Howells :


[2015-09-22]CCN-THOUSANDS OF BITCOINS HAVE BEEN LOST OVER TIME (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1186023.0)
[2017-11-27] That Missing Hard Drive with 7,500 Bitcoins is Now worth $72 Mln (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2472060.0)
[2021-07-08] The search for HDD worth $378 million at the landfill will continue (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5348411.0)

Even if he does find it there is no guarantee that the condition of his hard drive will be any good most of the times the electronic waste is processed which does mean that they might have crushed it long before which means the government might be sane enough to not give him permission to do so. This is something that might cause a lot of probelms because he might not only dig up the landfill but might also cause the already degrading waste to have massive smell in the local area. I do no think that this might work for real. At the same time putting it out in public just makes it a hidden treasure site and it's an old news not really important now.

That happened about a year ago. Him asking the city that is. I wonder if there has been any development since then. Have there been any news?

I heard another story like this days ago or maybe these are just the same case about the man who lost 7500 bitcoin and still trying to find it, many people will think why even this guy still looking for it even after all these years and why he is still hoping to find the bitcoins even if finding these bitcoins are very much hard and just like a needle in a haystack or ​even harder than it. but we should remember the number of bitcoins he lost which is a lot and if dind this amount of bitcoin he's life can be changed so maybe If I was the person who lost this amount of bitcoins I would start even digging the ground with empty hands.

There was a post from July of last year (thanks to Lucius for the post that stated from the last recent thread) telling of the owner of the hard drive will give himself 12 months in their campaign to find it:

So by that deadline in search of the most valuable hard drive in the world he has July of this year til this venture expires.

Not really; he would have saved the private key into another HDD which could be thrown away mistakenly as this one. If I'm correct, having the wallet file stored is a quite good practice as people may have a few/hundreds/thousands of addresses used. In that case, the wallet file would have done the job though the master private key would also be the same. Regardless of whatever could have his bitcoin saved, it's his bad luck actually that he wasn't aware of the mistake.
Don't most people save the wallet file only?

It is impossible to understand how deeply sad this person is and how desperate he is that he is taking such "measures" to return or partially return the lost millions! One can only sympathize with him, however, in the event of a fantastic success, he will, on the other hand, be the happiest person in the world! :) I hope he is lucky and we will hear this story many times, but I would like this story to have a happy ending.

Maybe he can be lucky to get back the hard drive. In this incident it is all his fate. Already this incident is a history, and now once again the history seems to be modified with the lost drive found safely. It is almost 9years after the incident. What he have lost is huge, and there'll be more users who have lost and have their life move on with some difficulty.

Uhmmmm, I think asking for permission might be in order. A mean, his talking about excavation and probably that would be him altering the site and possibly,  the suspension of further dumping of dirt on that site.
Again, its a really serious one from what's his offering and I'm also supposing he doesn't have the resources to get the work going and would need the help of his city in funding the process too. A process that could be said to be a high stake probability of success looking back to the time this hard drive was dumped (8years+). So much for a rash action!

The first time I heard this story was when BTC reached ATH in 2017, and it looks like this story will keep repeating itself like a historical story, and until whenever this story will definitely be brought up especially when BTC is going up, I just feel sorry for the owner of the hard drive. drive it and can't imagine how painful it must have been to lose such a great treasure.

He's still not giving up after a few years. If he ever finds that drive, it's already destroyed beyond repair and the data inside will never be recovered. Props to him though for being persistent, and going through the appropriate process of asking the government for permission to excavate. It is also hard to do such since he will spend money on the excavation process, but what if there's nothing in there anymore? This is entirely a gamble, and I don't think it is one that he will win.

This time bitcoin doesn't get too much attention because it has a low value, i saw this man story before and just ignored it as people do because I don't have any knowledge with the bitcoin at that time the same thing with the first pizza paid with the use of the bitcoin imagine how many years now this story is just nothing and now becomes one of the saddest stories who losses a lot of million dollars we didn't expect that the price of the bitcoin may rise up as long as here now.

Many people have lost bitcoin in this way or similar.
I had 0.08btc on a laptop when the hard drive got corrupted. At the time it was worth $50 at current market prices, so never went thru the process of hard drive recovery and just disposed of it along with the laptop.
But the reason for this story to keep going on, is the amount of bitcoin he had contained on this drive.
Nobody else had this amount on a single drive, or hadn't come forward such as he had to claim they did.

I agree with you on all points here and at what time did he realize that he throw away the hard disk containing those huge amounts of Bitcoin? did he mean to say that since the same day after installing the new one he never realize this until years later? how does he know that someone hasn't already found it since then? as you said, I am not sure what he is really up to?

I just can say " Good luck if this is exactly true".
Even this is actually difficult enough because not sure that the hardware is still right there. Or even the disk is still alive and can be operated again or not. Well, so many probabilities.
I think that it is only a matter of luck that he can find and get his Bitcoin back after so long time.
And this may be his super regret of the previous action.

It will be like this if the one who found it really knows what treasure is inside. But if they don't even know, the trash will end as trash and it might be recycled.  ;D

This guy is still fighting haha. I don’t blame him but I think that laptop is long gone, it’s probably 50m below ground level crushed into tiny pieces. He must live a tortured life now, I do feel sad for him, there must be tonnes of early adopters kicking themselves about their decision to sell the bitcoin they had or even worse, lose access to it. Let this be a lesson to all of you, never throw anything out.

He should have done something to dig it as early as possible before because he will surely have a hard time digging that hard drive these days. Also, the hard drive might get damaged so I hope that he could still recover it. There are really worst decisions that could lead to regrets in the future so we must always be responsible for our actions.

Looks like a publicity stunt and nothing else, he threw the hard drive in 2013 and he was in a comma not knowing the price till this time, giving the authorities a cut of the BTCitcoin if recovered is a good ploy but the authorities knows better that the probability of getting the hard disk after years of dumping is an impossible task.

If he had taken this task when he saw the first rally he might had his luck going his way, but now there is no way he is going to recover that.

This is a proof that bitcoin rise will always be unexpected, so we should always take advantage of the market to buy bitcoin while there is still good opportunity on hand. And yes, we can make worst decisions in life that will make us regrets in the end. So as much as possible, we should always be wary of our actions.

So its 9 years has passed from 2013, that makes it very impossible to find the lost hard drive. It may take a miracle to make it happen dude.

Maybe by that time, his faith for bitcoin is not that strong so he never value it as much as he could. And then all of a sudden, the price had made an enormous price surge that made him convinced to trace the lost hard drive. But then, its too late already. He lost millions of dollar more than he can ever think. Although this individual is still having high hopes, but the chance is very slim for the hard drive to be recovered.  So its better to start investing again and this time he should be more wise and responsible to manage his investment.

Over the years, I have read a few more lesser-known cases of people losing smaller amounts of BTC stored on an HDD, and one such story reportedly got a happy ending as the owner managed to save the BTC from the HDD that was damaged in the fire.

https://i.imgur.com/3MlJAn7.png
Source (https://twitter.com/0xjones/status/1352072247754715136)

The one who is closest to the most famous story with only 7000 BTC locked on a hardware wallet is Stefan Thomas who used protection that at least for now costs him a real fortune.

^^
How recent was this story about Jones and the burned hard drive with bitcoin on it?
I had heard of the person who had a whole lot of bitcoin on a hard drive 2-3 years ago and had only one more try to guess the code before it wiped it clean. Hadn't heard what happened as he probably hadn't had the guts enough to give it one more try.
Think it was called a deadman's switch type of security.

I agree and I do not understand why it took him this long to try to recover the Hard drive from that dump, after all, Bitcoin has been showing great profits since the incident. I don't even think this is something he can still find and even if by a miracle he is able to find it which I doubt, can this Drive still be restored for him to be able to access the info?

A tweet in my previous post is dated January 2021, and the disc was allegedly damaged by fire back in 2011 - but it is not known exactly what number of BTC was lost/recovered, although analysis says it should have had at least 32+ (https://verietyinfo.com/portugaleng/man-recovers-lost-bitcoins-in-burned-hd/) BTC at that time to become a millionaire.


Yes, it is Stefan Thomas who presents himself to the public as a kind of genius, but he managed to lose as many as two backups and of course he can't remember the password. To make matters worse for him, he chose IronKey to store that BTC, and as far as is known so far no one has been able to hack that device.

It is really a huge incident happen with him. He is on the list of the unfortunate person in the world. I just really wanna to see a ending of the story as well. I think many investor, gamer has lost their asset cause they ignore it when it low in price and didn’t keep the keys and document to back it up. I could not hold myself if there is happen something like this. I am just expecting that he will get back his asset and become happy.

Yes, I see your point and it is very acceptable, however when we start to see models like the S2F I have seen that many are not seeing it very well and are seeing inconsistencies, of course in the short term the model does not work, but In the long term, BTC still looks very good and apparently it still looks good, sometimes everyone can be a winner when BTC rises in price, because it is normal, it is natural and in fact it is what will happen, but I think that worldwide the safest investment in the world is BTC, because I know that it will rise much more than the last ATH, if people saw models like the S2F and had more knowledge of the market, maybe there would never be any doubts about BTC,

In conclusion, with what you mention about pizza paid for with so many BTC, it is synonymous that not everyone has the same investment concept as others, that it is necessary to raise financial education to understand many things that happen in the BTC market.

this man really didn't give up on his quest. Just imagine the current 7,500 Bitcoin if sold, he will become a very rich person, therefore this man continues to make efforts to find the Hard drive containing the bitcoin. but whether the hard drive is still intact and can function again after being found, because it has been more than 8 years in the trash. and he still needed permission to rummage through the trash because the trash he was looking for was a treasure.

  Although i felt the regrets that he is feeling now, but i really feel that even if he continues digging up until at the present times, the chances to found that hard drive is already very slim. So he should not expect too much that there' still hope to find it, as a lot of years have passed. But hey, its not too late for bitcoin. Invest in bitcoin again so you can regain the profits that you have lost unexpectedly. It will be useless if you keep on regretting, so start all over again as bitcoin will keep on opening doors of opportunities and its up to you how you will seize it.

I've read an article from last year about this guy and there was a company that offered to excavate for him. They have heavy equipment and were ready to strike a deal. They'd look for free and if they were to find it he'd give them half of the coins. I feel like the biggest problem here is all that red tape.


SSD data is much harder to recover. Unlike HDD, an SSD data can be completely wiped and it's much easier to damage the memory chip than a metal plate inside a metal case.

No one has predicted before that bitcoin will be a very huge investment this time, so maybe that is why he is still uncertain on his stand on bitcoin because he did not see its future value. And it can happen to anyone of us. But if you have the faith to something, even if you see the chances of that investment to explode is very slim, you will always give it a big importance and will try to keep it as much as you can.  But things happen differently. And this will be a life changing definitely if he will still succeed in looking for the hard drive. Maybe its too late for most of us, but for him there's always hope for it.

2013 is a long time back, and most people then never really believed in Bitcoin, and if they were told that Bitcoin is going to reach as much as it is today, they are not going to believe it at all.

So, I believe that he’s one of those who never really saw Bitcoin going as high as it is worth today. So that’s why he never really cared much about it, and that is the reason why such a mistake would have occurred. If he was truly someone that valued his Bitcoin that much, then I don’t think he would have made such a mistake. If he truly believes that he would be able to find that hard drive there, then wouldn’t be bad if the government gives him a chance.

Did they even give him the permission to do that? And even if he was given the permission to excavate  the land in search of his hard disk, is it possible that he would be able to find the hard disk? Personally, I feel that it is not going to be possible at all, but it wouldn’t be bad if he should give it a try, because he may still go there and luckily for him he might find it after searching for long.

This is why it is not good to disvalue something, even if you don’t know about it, and you are being told that what you are holding has value, you should learn to keep it safe and not just throw it away. Although in his case I would say it’s as a result of carelessness, because according to the OP he cloned the hard drive and mistakenly threw away the one that contained the Bitcoin.

I say give him the scavenge rights and the rest he can pay from his own pocket. I doubt that even if he finds the hard drive he will be able to retrieve anything that is on there. And also, they should fine him for throwing a hard drive into regular trash and not recycling, as you do with electronic components :) The dude should just let this go. He made a mistake and he should own up to it. I mean, give him the rights and make a TV show about it, or a documentary, he could actually profit from that. I wouldn't put much hope in finding that hard drive mate, it's just fools gold.

This is what I think also. There is no way that hard drive will still be intact. Somebody would have retrieved it at the point of dump for personal use or sold it off to a merchant who would in return sell it to someone in a third world country who may not even know the importance of it that it goes beyond a mere metal but one housing serious wealth. Let us even say it was left in the dump, what does he think will happen to it? Will he be able to retrieve any information from it because it would have been destroyed by hardship of season, rains and sun. He should just perish the thought of looking for it. It will be waste of time.

Never tried to recover a hard drive so wouldn't know which hardware would be more difficult to recover. But if all resources were available to do it, I would assume anything is possible to get the data. Just look at what the police and interpol's forensic departments can do when they are investigating anything related to cyber crime.

You wouldn't happen to have reference to this article about the company wanting to do the excavation for free and splitting the coins?
Didn't hear about this offer to the victim before.

Am hoping that after all this effort that the man is putting in trying to retrieve the lost coins, i hope he has his private keys to these coins because chances are keys might not be on this hard drive after putting all these resources in trying to get his lost treasure.

Hope this ends with a happy ending because scavengers might have also got to this which might be a loss on his side.

The answer to this question also worries me. If permission to search for HDD with Bitcoins in the garbage of James is given, despite the fact that it violates the law, then this will be a serious precedent. The law must be the same for everyone. If the opportunity to get 25% of the contents of HDD allows the city administration to rewrite laws, then this is certainly a very serious and bad sign.

In the end, the perseverance and perseverance of James Howells can be envied.  He doesn't lose hope of becoming a multi-millionaire even with such a low chance of finding HDD and after so much time (don't forget that HDD is in an aggressive environment and data loss is most likely).

There are too many uncertainties here because he threw it in the dump long time back and anything could have happened by then.
May be someone else would have found it already and but wasn't able to recover the drive.
May be someone else would have found it and was able to recover the drive and used those coins.
The possibility of finding the hard drive is low and even if that person finds it it would be very hard for someone to recover the coins from the drive.

Having his private key is his way of getting his wallet back and having his bitcoins back. But if he doesn't remember or doesn't have time to save his private key elsewhere, then he won't be able to open his wallet again, and he can only let it go. Even if he could find the hard drive, as long as he didn't have the private key, he wouldn't be able to open the wallet. We can only pray for him and hope he can find his private key and get his hard drive back.

For sure, he has his private key secure. With a huge amount of bitcoins like that, who would careless store his private key anywhere? It is also dangerous to store private key on the same device or drive he is using because a malware can scan it and steal it.

If a normal scavengers found his drive, they cant still open it up because they are just a normal scavengers anyway and they do not have a good knowledge on how btc technology works but worst thing can happen is they can sold it for someone that has a knowledge on this. Recovering them on their own without a private key can still be hard or nearly impossible. The happy ending is if they can negotiate with the real owner.

There was an update to this story a month or so ago where the person who lost the hard drive must already be infact rich.
That he has plans to have some sort of robots that are more like drones built so they can scan the garbage field in England for the missing drive.
That to me that is going to cost him as much as the coins are probably worth from where the markets stand right of now. :D

The robotic dogs he plans to use as part of his plan, if he is ever actually allowed at some point, are made by Boston Dynamics (https://www.bostondynamics.com/products/spot), and are probably not that expensive looking at the big picture: 75K$ per K9 bot, which are allegedly going to be called Satoshi and Hal of all names …

See: https://www.businessinsider.com/james-howells-wants-2-robot-dogs-help-find-bitcoin-dump-2022-7

For those interested in the case, this 12-minute long video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZr97E5PgzQ) depicts the case and interviews James Howell, outlining some of the arguments he plans to use to plea Newport city council for permission. It seems like a no-go to me, but I haven’t read any updates on the case for over a month now.

Honestly, despite getting away with some of the pitfalls you'd have by having a actual human manned search inside a active site, I still don't think he'll get the permission required. The environmental experts would have a field day with the local council, and they'd likely find themselves in hot water. So, while he's doing the right thing in suggesting he would look to improve the local area by investing in it from the Bitcoin on the hard drive, there's just too many variables, as well as health, and safety.

My first thoughts when this started all those years ago, is he'll never get permission for a number of reasons, but one that really stuck out was the health, and safety violations. For example. it's an active site, and could potentially have unwanted sharp objects, which they'd never be able to give permission to someone to look through it, knowing that there's a good chance that they could get seriously hurt.

So, going the robot route is a good idea, it reduces the risk of injury, and death, plus no one actually needs to be on site. However, there's still issues with disturbance of the debris, which would create a environmental hazard, at least that's what the local council have in mind.

Plus, this is all hearsay remember. While, this man's case might be genuine, he can't prove that A) these funds exist B) They'll still be retrievable, and C) he can retrieve them without causing any disturbance or health hazards.

Plus, it really does open a can of worms if the council did open it up for him to search, since all sorts of people could claim to have lost something. Unfortunately, he's probably never going to obtain that hard drive legally.

I don't think he was rich, not overly so anyway. I guess that's whatever you deem rich is, he obviously had a decent job being a computer engineer. However, I would think he has made money from the publicity, I mean he has some fairly successful presenters doing a sort of documentary on him, and I'm assuming that wasn't done for free, since stories are sold all the time. Plus, the numerous other stories which have developed along the years. Pretty much everyone in Wales knows this story. Also, and don't quote me on this I believe there's been public fundraising done, as well as likely private investors which have gotten involved in the project. In one of the articles above he says the funding has been secured, therefore the people involved in the proposed project are all likely getting a share if it was ever found.

Just to correct you there too, Newport is in Wales, not England.

I feel like some people want to exploit Bitcoin's popularity this way to gain fame. I personally lost some Bitcoin as well, also I lost some altcoins, thanks to forgetting/losing private keys. But I know the fact that its "nearly" impossible to find those private keys in my young days. So I stopped looking for. I think this guy probably does a show as he will never ever find anything related to claimed Bitcoin. I expect nothing out of this.

His pains and regrets would be immeasurable. Losing such an amount carelessly can be very painful. Although it would be a difficult task to get it back but with the support of the necessary bodies or team of specialists, that hard drive could be found. But it would be impossible to get it back in my country because immediately after it is dumped, human scavengers are already waiting to feast on the parts which are normally sold as scraps.  

If it were in my country he would have gotten permission to excavate the dumpsite immediately. They would never consider the environmental or health implications. In fact, the government would have seen the armed forces protect the site because criminals would have been planning how to use sophisticated types of equipment to retrieve the hard drive. $70,000,000 is a considerable sum that can change the infrastructures of the Local government.

As you could read in my post, the man charged £250 for an ordinary interview, and made the whole thing even more attractive with the claim that the lost hard drive also contains evidence of Satoshi (IP address).


I don't know what kind of job he had before, but they say that now he doesn't do anything else except that he tries every way he can to find the hard disk. Allegedly, he has enough private funds for the entire operation, but he never manages to get permission from the local authorities. I have to admit that these people really have a steely attitude when they refuse to change their opinion all this time, even though they say that everyone has a price at which they will change their decision.

My utmost apologies to a Welsh calling it part of England.
As for being rich, If he can pay nearly a hundred thousand dollars per K9 robot drone-type unit that DrmrDdmr has mentioned, then I will consider this rich with the sky high level of inflation the UK and Europe are in (yes higher than in the US) and not needing to worry about the basics.
I would then assume people of Great Britain are very well off indeed and their poverty level is quite low.
But that is neither here or there pertaining to this article. So I will just leave it there.

The drive contains satoshi's IP address?
Well then now, that makes this scavenger hunt much more interesting.

Allegedly, as I have published in this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5384186.msg59148223#msg59148223). But that information doesn't really make much sense to me, considering that Satoshi certainly didn't leave his real IP address anywhere - and if by any chance James Howells is right, then everyone who mined Bitcoin at that time would know that same information - maybe I'm missing something in that to the whole story, so if anyone understands what JH is talking about in the context of the Satoshi IP address, please explain it to us all.

See, this is why I've remained sceptical this whole time, and this almost confirms it to me. I highly doubt that this is the case, and it seems as an attempt to drum up more information, and therefore generate himself more money. Whether or not he actually has the funds to fund an operation of this scale is also questionable in my eyes. He might claim he can, but is it all depending on the amount of media interest he can drum up.

As far as I'm aware he does say that he has enough to fund it via private investment funds, which leads me to believe that he doesn't actually have the money himself. I might be misremembering that, but I did watch one of the interviews somewhat recently, probably in response to this thread.

Like I said, the longer the story goes on the more I become sceptical, and it's largely because of how he words a lot of the things he says, but also makes claims like this. Once I get time later (probably more tomorrow), I'll watch the interview in which he says this, since I'm highly curious on how he even thinks he had that information.

It seems that the Satoshi IP is just an addition that raises the whole story to a higher level, although it seems to me that it is not something that was discussed much, because the focus was always on the lost Bitcoins. Unless we're missing something in the technical sense (which is unlikely), I don't see how that supposedly lost hard disk could contain such information.

Yeah, I know we're sceptical of his claims, but him lying or whatever about having Satoshi's IP addresses doesn't automatically mean he's lying about the Bitcoin. He could potentially just be grasping at straws, and wanting to drum up enough media interest that he would be allowed to dig, and therefore he thinks lying about the IPs could potentially make that happen.

I didn't know about him being allowed to dig in the site before the media got interested though. That's something I didn't hear about, and if that's accurate he should probably just let this whole news interest die out, and see if they allow him to dig in a few years. Something tells me though, he quite likes the media attention.

^^
Or he could very well be waiting for a gofundme to transpire with this statement about satoshi's ip.
Who knows really.
But if he doesn't need to pay for some of the equipment at any rate, even if he is wealthy, then he will most certainly take it in that direction.

I keep coming back to this thread hoping to read that he has found the drive, recovered the bitcoin, and now lives in a mansion. But sadly, no. A question that keeps bothering me is  - What must have prompted him to throw the drive away knowing he had such huge amount of bitcoin in it. Was it anger, depression, hopelessness or what? Because from the story, it seems obvious that he was aware at the time that the drive contained bitcoins. Furthermore just like a user already said - there is the possibility that the drive isn't even in the landfill anymore. Who knows it might just be in the possession of a garbage collector who doesn't even know its worth.

Yes I saw this thread and wondered if some progress had been made in the recovery.

According to his initial statement below, it was a mistake.


Its highly unlikely that the HD was picked up from the thrash by anyone else,
Here and in Wales and elsewhere the rubbish bags and bins are dumped into a truck
along with hundreds of other bags and bons from the days collection route. I can be
corrected on this but on these Islands or this part of the world there is nobody scavenging
through the land fill dump looking for 'treasure'.

The answer to your question can be found just a few posts above, and if that statement is correct, then it was not Howells who threw the hard drive, but his partner, which was a completely new detail for me until recently. The story that was circulating was that he had two hard drives in the drawer and that he decided to throw one away, and it turned out that he threw away the wrong one.

If it is true that his partner did it anyway (if it is a woman), then maybe she was just cleaning the house and thought that it was a piece of ordinary junk that is unnecessarily sitting in a drawer.

There is a small ventilation hole on the top cover with filters, so the HDD can "breath" when the air pressure changes like on higher altitudes but even if there's corrosive fluid leaking into the drive which is highly unlikely, the platters are made of aluminum or ceramics covered with magnetic "dust" which is coated with extra layer of carbon.

Nope, still nothing. Keep in mind that he threw away HDD back in 2013, meaning its been buried under 9 years of thrash so chances of him recovering even if local authorities allowed it are slim to none. That guy should just give it up and forget about it, no point to spend rest of your life looking for that HDD.


They already did that (and concluded that its not worth the effort due funding and environmental issues.


That would be least of his concerns. We are talking here about 7500 BTC, not some ridiculously high amount.

It is really a hard task, because entire landfills need to be dug. Further things need to be segregated and from that finding the hard drive containing the mined bitcoins is a hard thing. The landfill is of wastes dumped for decades, and the IT Engineer have planned for usage of AI specialist and technology to make the search easier. It is also said that digging the landfills could cause environmental pollution. Teams to monitor the same has been formed. In some way every measure is taken, but it is time to wait for the success. If the hard disk is found, 10% gets allocated for the development of the City as Crypto hub which is really appreciable.

And that's why he's still got some hope if ever he finds that HDD that he's thrown before. But, what if all of the search efforts would be gone in vain and a long time ago, someone has already found it in that landfill?

I get the mindset of that guy and ask for help from the government and anyone who wants to find that treasure. Because it's better to share the entire amount with anyone who helps him find out rather than it's lost forever.

But that's it, what if it's already lost and they're just wasting effort and energy into looking for nothing?

He is willing to give the city of Newport in the UK a cut of the bitcoin at a sum of $70 million so to be able to do this with approval of their local government.
This story has been run all around the globe at this point and has alot of people scratching their heads as to why he would need permission to rummage around a landfill site in garbage. Alot of countries allow those who want to go around their local trash site looking for pop cans for recycling or whatever they want to bring out of it. Since it is just garbage there.

A person can not only get injured walking there but also there’s a chance to fall into a cavity. Can you imagine the size of landfills? It may be that a person will never be found.

There's nothing to loose there as both parties have every tendencies to win as it is a win win game. Come to talk of it, we are talking of an asset in Bitcoin with an estimated value of over $200 million here. Giving the government %25 of the asset as an offer is something worth it. However, this would go along way helping the government if it scales through. This is not a small project either as it requires more workforce because the dumpsite would be excavated as it is almost a decade since the hard disk was thrown there. I believe why the delay because lots of things needs to be put into consideration before embarking on the project as it is not an easy task. Another factor we need to look into is the health of the citizens who live close to the dumpsite. Excavating such site is more or less giving room for insects and pest invasion which will be of big detriment to the people living there so therefore weighing bot options, both parties needs to come to a term before embarking upon such task.

9 years lost, probably buried in the ground? Good luck wasting your time there. The problem with the municipality is that they don't know for sure he has indeed lost such fortune, or he's just lying to earn some bucks from media.

7,500 BTC is not a ridiculously high amount?  :P

Losing as much as 7500 bitcoins is certainly the man's biggest regret in his life, you can imagine how much wealth he currently has if he still keeps the hard drive, indeed we can't predict luck at all but losing a hard drive containing that many bitcoins is of course a a very regrettable misfortune for the rest of life, I saw a title and a new film triller on the internet, is it possible that the film is based on the true story of the man who lost bitcoin?

https://i.ibb.co/QbtXnLd/IMG-20221030-000758.jpg

Yes, 5 days ago

"I'll sue the council unless I can dig it up"

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ive-160m-fortune-lost-dump-27679758

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lost-bitcoin-crypto-james-howells-b2406517.html