[2017-05-31]Tech journalist accidentally throws away £2.5 million worth of BTC

[Eric Cartman]

Tech journalist accidentally throws away £2.5 million worth of Bitcoin – and he’s not the only one who’s lost a fortune

Unfortunate writer joins a list of people who mislaid vast sums of the virtual currency when it was worthless and then watched it soar in value

WHEN the digital currency bitcoin was first introduced, it was essentially worthless.

Now just one of the electronic “coins” is worth more than £1,764 and many early investors are celebrating their new-found wealth.

But one tech journalist missed out on the virtual gold rush because he threw away a hard drive which he used to store 1,400 bitcoins back when they were worth peanuts – and he’s not the only one to make a similar mistake.

Now Campbell Simpson is kicking himself because his lost stash is worth a whopping £2.5 million.

“Five years ago, I threw away a hard drive- an utterly generic 250GB portable hard drive, already a few years old, with a couple of dings and scratches in its shell and with the beginnings of an audible click that would have eventually killed it,” the Australian journo wrote on Gizmodo.


https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3682157/tech-journalist-accidentally-throws-away-2-5-million-worth-of-bitcoin-and-hes-not-the-only-one-whos-lost-a-fortune/

[Kemarit]

Sad story indeed. Although really he's not the one who lost millions worth of bitcoin. You can go around here in our forum people complaining about losing their early bitcoin as well, including me. And its really painful and frustrated to learn that you just throw it all away like that. That's why we really have to take care of things, material or immaterial because we really don't know its worth until its gone. If we can just go back in time and secure our bitcoin. Oh well, lessons learned for all of us.

[Carlton Banks]

That's why we really have to take care of things, material or immaterial

The information age will be manifestly kicking the ass of all those who pay no heed to it's theme: information is the 21st commodity

Do you know?
Is it true?
Is it false?
What does it mean?
What are the consequences?
How does it change the way we evaluate what we already knew, or believed we knew?


It's a thing, this information game.

[TraderTimm]

For that much money I'd be at the local landfill with a backhoe and a metal detector.

But I guess he never pursued it even right after he realized it was thrown out. Likely sitting in some substrate somewhere slowly bit-rotting away...