2 box of pizza and a person who throw his hard drive

[akirasendo17]

I'm pretty sure you are familiar with Laszlo the person who bought pizza with his bitcoin, now a person name Howell will pay 70 million dollars as a reward just to get his hard drive, but for me, I think it's just a waste of time to find a hard drive on the dumpsite why? the hard drive for sure is already not working since it already there a couple of years and if ever they will find it, it will be worthless since it will not work, also according to them, here is the link:
https://www.businessinsider.com/man-offers-council-70-million-dig-up-bitcoin-hard-drive-2021-1
what are your thoughts on this? for me it may result in an environmental hazard since it's in a dumpsite digging for one hard drive is not a good idea

[Upgrade00]

what are your thoughts on this? for me it may result in an environmental hazard since its a dumpsite

It's an unfortunate situation and understandably anyone in his shoes would be desperate to recover even a tiny bit of their lost coins, however I do not think the plan would work. He is proposing getting investors to fund the retrieval and pay them with the Bitcoins on the hard drive, but there is no guarantee it would be found or is recoverable. 8 years is a pretty long time.
I don't understand the comparison between the pizza sale and the lost hard drive. Bitcoin is used as a means of exchange and people who use it to pay for services are usually aware it could have a higher market price in the future, but still chose to utilize it. If everyone simply hodled, it would likely not be as popular as it is now.

[hd49728]

It is sad story and I had my sad story too. I did mine a shit altcoin in 2017 and with the hype of altcoins in 2018, with the amount I had, if I sell them all, I will have about 2.4 bitcoin. You know how much 2.4 bitcoin worths now. Sadly to admit, I did not sell that shit coin, as I believed it can rise higher. Now, the coin is dead and has 0 value.

I made my same mistake like the second guy. When price fell a lot, I did not stake that coin and forgot the wallet password. Honestly I don't know the coin will be woken up and price will rise again but I accept that I lost 2.4 bitcoin and that wallet.

High or low price, any coin you store it in a wallet, please make backup of wallet password.

[Findingnemo]

Chances of finding the hard drive is almost zero, but why he threw an working hard drive to a dump yard? I guess he is simply trying to get fame with his decorated stories.

If he was telling the truth then he missed his life time lottery with negligence which will make him to regret throughout the life time.

[hatshepsut93]

I'm pretty sure you are familiar with Laszlo the person who bought pizza with his bitcoin, now a person name Howell will pay 70 million dollars as a reward just to get his hard drive, but for me, I think it's just a waste of time to find a hard drive on the dumpsite why? the hard drive for sure is already not working since it already there a couple of years and if ever they will find it, it will be worthless since it will not work

Of course the hard drive won't work if you just try to plug it into computer, but if we imagine that they found it, there is some chance that they will be able to extract the data from it using specifalized tools. But I think no one will ever do it, this operation would cost millions and will have only a slim chance of success - it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and then you'd have to hope that the part of the hard drive with the wallet files wasn't damaged and the data is retrievable, and then hope that the wallet wasn't encrypted or at least the password wasn't too strong.

[ranochigo]

Unless the hard drive was vacuum sealed or well kept in layers of shipping foam with waterproofing, it's safe to say that the disk would probably be damaged beyond recognition at this point in time. Magnetic striped disks are very fragile and there is zero chance of it surviving for so many years unless some miracle happens. The most I've seen was a HDD being recovered from a burned hard drive but it was shipped relatively quickly to the recovery company and didn't sustained too much damage. Oh wells, paying 70 million if it gets recovered doesn't cost the owner too much anyways.

[DdmrDdmr]

The guy is now offering a 25% cut to the city council if he gets the permissions and actually manages to both recover the hard drive and the necessary information. The cut was 10% three years ago (https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/888295/bitcoin-price-uk-buy-value-wales-newport-james-howells-council-landfill-rubbish).

Apart from the needle in the haystack, there’s this to consider (quote from above referenced 2017 article):

"It is likely that the hardware would have suffered significant Galvanic corrosion due to the presence of landfill leachates and gasses."

He does seem to have a thing for BCH … : https://twitter.com/howelzy?lang=es

[Raflesia]

I believe it is difficult to find a discarded hard drive and I saw in the article only that the password was forgotten, in this case is it drama or is it real and why are the precious bitcoin assets on the hard drive thrown away while it is so important?

So it would be completely lost and never found out which trash can there is a hard drive so even with a big reward for whoever finds it he is a very lucky person. lol

[khaled0111]

Despite the generous offer, the city council refused it because of the environmental damage it may cause.
Besides there are no guarantees he will find the hard drive and even if he does the chances of recovering the data are near zero.
Moreover, did he provide any proof that he really own those bitcoin in first place? Even in 2013, 7500btc were worth a lot of money and it's hard to believe someone would throw such valuable hard drive away before being 100% sure he'd backed up his wallet file.

[Asuspawer09]

I'm pretty sure you are familiar with Laszlo the person who bought pizza with his bitcoin, now a person name Howell will pay 70 million dollars as a reward just to get his hard drive, but for me, I think it's just a waste of time to find a hard drive on the dumpsite why? the hard drive for sure is already not working since it already there a couple of years and if ever they will find it, it will be worthless since it will not work, also according to them, here is the link:
https://www.businessinsider.com/man-offers-council-70-million-dig-up-bitcoin-hard-drive-2021-1
what are your thoughts on this? for me it may result in an environmental hazard since it's in a dumpsite digging for one hard drive is not a good idea

I guess it would make sense considering the amount that he might get if he is able to recover his bitcoin at that point.

For sure it's too late since the hard drive is lost 7 years ago in the dumpsite so it might not work or it broke at this moment, but I guess if the hard drive doesn't work anymore the reward money will cannot be claim i guess the reward will just come from that hard drive.

That's really frustrating losing that kind amount of money when trading losing a few hundred dollars is really stressful  imagine losing millions.

[sheenshane]

So it would be completely lost and never found out which trash can there is a hard drive so even with a big reward for whoever finds it he is a very lucky person. lol

But at least he just tried to dig it, and who knows he will able to find out by his luck.  But the article said that the City council didn't allow that man to dig and excavate on the dumpsite.  The percentage of chances that he will found the lost hard drive is very slim and impossible, and that was in 2013 and now we are in the year 2021.  I couldn't imagine if that hard drive will still function or it was already divided into tiny pieces.

There's no chance to find that valuable thing because he was a careless person at that time and now for sure he was full of regret.  Sometimes we need to take care of our valuable assets or keep those old things in your storage room that you think it is helpful for you in the future.

He does seem to have a thing for BCH … : https://twitter.com/howelzy?lang=es

Is he disappointed with Bitcoin? it seems he is promoting BCH at this time.

[RapTarX]

Laszlo case is totally different; if he didn't do the tx, we would never possibly know who he is or never name him at all. That tx made him history. I had read an interview with him and he never seems disappointed with the tx.
But Howell! How could he throw away a drive which had such a huge amount of BTC? I don't think it's ever going to be possible to get the drive back.

[OgNasty]

Those are two great stories in the Bitcoin world.

I put together a collection of 10 other classic posts you might find interesting here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2822621.0

Looking through the thread you can see other great posts that have been added by other members as well.

[cabron]

There are states where waste management is veryorganized that crime investigation somehow rely to their organized system to which they could find garbages from dating back for weeks to months. But 8 years is just too much.

 The drive could have been grounded already, unrecoverable. Anyone who finds it also will assume the password/ privatekey is written on a file in the drive. He could just recover it himself.

[passwordnow]

There is a chance, a chance that someone had already found it. I've searched for some relevant news about his search and there's one that I've seen that has been published on 2013 and it's also him talking about the lost hard drive. 8 years had been passed and there's no one that had ever found it. Usually in this scenario, he has to accept what's done is done and it's just a messed up if he'll do it without any assurance of it. Although it's worth of a gamble for him if ever he finds it but there's no chance left finding it after several years gone.

[samputin]

for me it may result in an environmental hazard since it's in a dumpsite digging for one hard drive is not a good idea

Stories of misfortune events are suddenly sprouting as bitcoin's price rises recently. Pretty hilarious because btc is now the trend of the hour once again, I wonder if it will remain the same if the bubble finally burst.

Anyway, aside from health issues, I can't see something wrong if somebody would dig on a dumpsite. You are not creating environmental hazards because the dumpsite itself is already a hazard. Actually you are helping if the what you are doing is to dig and replace all the trash you sorted into a sanitary landfill hehe.

[FACE 2 FACE]

The dude who lost his hard drive is in a panic now, because in reality he would have been a multimillionaire long ago if not for this case, so he is ready to do anything just to get his bitcoins back.

This is a very sad story and one can understand him in his position. He is ready to give 70 million to get the opportunity to get his money back. And it’s strange for me that the municipality still hasn’t accommodate this request.

[AakZaki]

He was a complete clumsy man and one who deeply regretted throwing away the hard drive containing millions of dollars in assets. Why should he throw it away, can't he just keep it in his warehouse.

Even though the hard drive was found,
The operational costs of decoding a damaged hard drive piled with trash can be very difficult. there are only a few possibilities to be able to extract the data. There will likely be a lot of corrupted data.

But if the hard drive is destroyed there won't be another chance. Forget it.