Man who lost 7500 bitcoin in a landfill asks gov't he wants to dig it up

[RapTarX]

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

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?

[Gamerholic]

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.

[Vaskiy]

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.

[Smartvirus]

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!

[Mame89]

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.

[dothebeats]

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.

[Peanutswar]

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.

[rdbase]

But in 2013 and in general in those years there were so many similar stories ... If people knew how it could end now, they would obviously act differently.

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.

[Henrobakkara]

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.

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?

[Rengga Jati]

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.

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.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure!"

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. 

[DeathAngel]

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.

[Cling18]

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.

[eaLiTy]

~
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.

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.

[freedomgo]

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.

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.

[stadus]

~
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.

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.

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.

[Lucius]

Nobody else had this amount on a single drive, or hadn't come forward such as he had to claim they did.

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.


Source

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.

Early crypto pioneer Stefan Thomas, formerly CTO of xxx, currently holds a hardware wallet with over 7000 BTC inside, yet has only two guesses left to unlock it before its built-in security feature wipes the wallet clean.

[rdbase]

^^
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.

[KaliLinux]

~
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.

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.

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?

[Lucius]

How recent was this story about Jones and the burned hard drive with bitcoin on it?

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+ BTC at that time to become a millionaire.

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.

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.

Thomas kept his password in three different places. The first two are completely lost. His last hope is an IronKey, an encrypted flash drive.  Nobody can break into an IronKey. Even the company that makes the IronKey, Kingston Technology, can't break into an IronKey. That's the way it's designed. It's military-grade hardware, impervious to all attacks. You're only allowed 10 attempts to guess the password of an IronKey. After that, the encryption key is automatically erased and the information is lost forever.

[sarmrakib]

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.

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.