James Howell and his lost passphrase!!!

[Glowy]

James howlett, the guy who had his BTC passphrase stored in his drive and for some reasons he was cleaning his office and  he tossed that drive in the trash and off that trash went, to the dump site.

It's been over a decade of his trying to access this drive. Fortunately, he knows he trashed the drive and the dump site where the drive is, supposedly.

However authority won't let him access the site. Stating that, scavenging the site for his drive will pose health threats, as the gas from the site will be hazardous (which is true).

It turns out that James lost that battle, he is not permitted to go to that dirt for his drive.

But am just wondering, what if James was given access to the decade of waste dump.

Would he have found that storage?

It's been years and the waste has become chemical it's possible the drive would have been dissolved or something.

But let's assume he gets his hands on the drive, would it still be readable?

Experts in this field please shed some light on this. I believe there are different gurus in here.

Would the risk have been worth it? 
The atmospheric damage, the pollution that search would have caused the residents closest (maybe 100 km) to the site.
Would it have been worth the effort?

I got fillers from...https://indiandefencereview.com/after-12-years-of-failed-attempts-the-man-who-lost-his-hard-drive-containing-742m-in-bitcoin-is-forced-to-abandon-his-search/

[ABCbits]

James howlett, the guy who had his BTC passphrase stored in his drive and for some reasons he was cleaning his office and  he tossed that drive in the trash and off that trash went, to the dump site.

I think you meant private keys rather than passphrase. Passphrase usually refer to string you add on BIP 39 mnemonic/recovery words.

But am just wondering, what if James was given access to the decade of waste dump.

Would he have found that storage?

It's been years and the waste has become chemical it's possible the drive would have been dissolved or something.

But let's assume he gets his hands on the drive, would it still be readable?

I think almost everyone agree chance to find his hard drive and able to recover his private key successfully is extremely close to 0.

[memehunter]

I think almost everyone agree chance to find his hard drive and able to recover his private key successfully is extremely close to 0.

If I am not wrong, he even gave the proposal of bearing all the cost of scavenging (correct me if I am wrong), the only caveat was if he found it . This is a gamble for the authorities and can easily set a bad precedent.

[Glowy]

James howlett, the guy who had his BTC passphrase stored in his drive and for some reasons he was cleaning his office and  he tossed that drive in the trash and off that trash went, to the dump site.

I think you meant private keys rather than passphrase. Passphrase usually refer to string you add on BIP 39 mnemonic/recovery words.

But am just wondering, what if James was given access to the decade of waste dump.

Would he have found that storage?

It's been years and the waste has become chemical it's possible the drive would have been dissolved or something.

But let's assume he gets his hands on the drive, would it still be readable?

I think almost everyone agree chance to find his hard drive and able to recover his private key successfully is extremely close to 0.

Yes please, private key not passphrase. Thank you.

[pooya87]

Sometimes in life you fall down, you lose money, etc. but you have to accept your failure and your losses and then get back up, dust yourself off and start again instead of just lying there trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

The article said the loss was a decade ago, so 2014-15. Bitcoin price back then was below a grand, that's the year I found out about bitcoin. Price even went as low as $150 at some point. Imagine if instead of desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack for a decade, he had started accumulated bitcoin! Today he might not have 1000 bitcoins but he could have definitely had a couple of million dollars worth of bitcoin.

[bitmover]

Sometimes in life you fall down, you lose money, etc. but you have to accept your failure and your losses and then get back up, dust yourself off and start again instead of just lying there trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

The article said the loss was a decade ago, so 2014-15. Bitcoin price back then was below a grand, that's the year I found out about bitcoin. Price even went as low as $150 at some point. Imagine if instead of desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack for a decade, he had started accumulated bitcoin! Today he might not have 1000 bitcoins but he could have definitely had a couple of million dollars worth of bitcoin.

Interesting perspective.

Imagine all the money and time he spent trying to find that drive. If he had just redirected that money and energy to bitcoin investing and accumulating over the past 10 years, he would have millions and millions of dollars now.

But it looks like to be his obsession now. He is known worldwide for that, and all the attention he is getting is encouraging him to maintain this behavior.

[Z-tight]

I don't think there is any bitcoiner who isn't familiar with this story of James Howells and his lost hard drive, however, op it wasn't James who threw away the hard drive, it was actually his girlfriend. If BTC was worth a lot back then, i am sure James would kept it away from the reach of his girlfriend.

I have said this before, i can imagine the toll this must have taken on James' mental health, he simply has to let go, the funds are lost and there is no way to get them back, time to move forward.

[Wind_FURY]

Sometimes in life you fall down, you lose money, etc. but you have to accept your failure and your losses and then get back up, dust yourself off and start again instead of just lying there trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

The article said the loss was a decade ago, so 2014-15. Bitcoin price back then was below a grand, that's the year I found out about bitcoin. Price even went as low as $150 at some point. Imagine if instead of desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack for a decade, he had started accumulated bitcoin! Today he might not have 1000 bitcoins but he could have definitely had a couple of million dollars worth of bitcoin.

Is the person described in OP the same person who's currently proposing to actually BUY the dump site?

 

But here's main part of the proposal. He wants to sell NFTs to the community to fund the purchase of the dump site. I'm very cynical about that because after ten years he probably has gotten so tired of his "Hard Drive Journey" but to get some money instead of the actual passphrase, he's now selling the story and retire from his chase.

[memehunter]

Is the person described in OP the same person who's currently proposing to actually BUY the dump site?

 

But here's main part of the proposal. He wants to sell NFTs to the community to fund the purchase of the dump site. I'm very cynical about that because after ten years he probably has gotten so tired of his "Hard Drive Journey" but to get some money instead of the actual passphrase, he's now selling the story and retire from his chase.

IMO he has more chances to sell his story than finding the drive in a useful condition.
I do not think it is possible to buy that land because of the public health risk, let alone digging the garbage.   

[pooya87]

But here's main part of the proposal. He wants to sell NFTs to the community to fund the purchase of the dump site. I'm very cynical about that because after ten years he probably has gotten so tired of his "Hard Drive Journey" but to get some money instead of the actual passphrase, he's now selling the story and retire from his chase.

We have an expression in Farsi that roughly translates to "The fish is fresh whenever you catch it [from water]". If he moves on now, it still is no too late. Whether it is just by giving up the search or by selling tokens to raise money for the story and then move on! Life is too short to waste it like this. Before he knows it, another decade will have gone and price is $10 million per bitcoin and he is still searching...

[Russlenat]

After more than a decade, that drive is almost certainly no longer in the location he remembers, or it might have already been destroyed. At this point, searching for it is just a waste of time and money, even though it likely contains a huge amount of Bitcoin. His desperation to find it, despite all these years passing, shows how valuable it must be. And honestly, we can’t blame him considering Bitcoin’s current price and the fact that he lost it a decade ago, its value is probably in the millions, if not billions.

[Z-tight]

And honestly, we can’t blame him considering Bitcoin’s current price and the fact that he lost it a decade ago, its value is probably in the millions,

Yeah we cannot blame him if he was searching for it after 1 year, or maybe after 3-4 years, that is understandable, but it has been more than 10 years now, and within this time BTC price has been rising and the network is growing. I also don't think that James Howells has been buying BTC in all this time that he has been searching for his lost hard drive, he has probably put all his energy in looking for it, so that is were the problem is.

[Wind_FURY]

Is the person described in OP the same person who's currently proposing to actually BUY the dump site?

 

But here's main part of the proposal. He wants to sell NFTs to the community to fund the purchase of the dump site. I'm very cynical about that because after ten years he probably has gotten so tired of his "Hard Drive Journey" but to get some money instead of the actual passphrase, he's now selling the story and retire from his chase.

IMO he has more chances to sell his story than finding the drive in a useful condition.
I do not think it is possible to buy that land because of the public health risk, let alone digging the garbage.   

Selling the story through an NFT collection that's backed by a promise that the holders will have a percentage of the total amount of Bitcoin in that hard drive would probably make him a large profit, no? That's the presumption that he could buy the dump site.

 

That would be a good hedge against the lost Bitcoins. Plus if the search is ongoing and price of Bitcoin keeps surging cycle after cycle, then the price those NFTs might also keep surging. 👀

[Glowy]

Sometimes in life you fall down, you lose money, etc. but you have to accept your failure and your losses and then get back up, dust yourself off and start again instead of just lying there trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

The article said the loss was a decade ago, so 2014-15. Bitcoin price back then was below a grand, that's the year I found out about bitcoin. Price even went as low as $150 at some point. Imagine if instead of desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack for a decade, he had started accumulated bitcoin! Today he might not have 1000 bitcoins but he could have definitely had a couple of million dollars worth of bitcoin.

Oh my world, this is wisdom speaking. You are 120 right. If he has invested the money he is willing to path with  in that search, he will certainly be counting his profit from BTC still.

[Sticky Bomb]

Sometimes in life you fall down, you lose money, etc. but you have to accept your failure and your losses and then get back up, dust yourself off and start again instead of just lying there trying to fix something that can't be fixed.

The article said the loss was a decade ago, so 2014-15. Bitcoin price back then was below a grand, that's the year I found out about bitcoin. Price even went as low as $150 at some point. Imagine if instead of desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack for a decade, he had started accumulated bitcoin! Today he might not have 1000 bitcoins but he could have definitely had a couple of million dollars worth of bitcoin.

Yeah, he was too convinced that he'll find it and neglected to create a backup Bitcoin accumulation plan to still have some Bitcoin for himself in case he fails to recover the drive.

If I were him, I'll not give up totally on the search for the drive, I'll keep searching for it for the bigger wealth, but I'll also be stacking some new Bitcoin not to miss out totally on it. Maybe he bought more Bitcoin along the way, but he's not letting the drive go because of the value of Bitcoin held in the corresponding wallet.

[Z-tight]

If I were him, I'll not give up totally on the search for the drive, I'll keep searching for it for the bigger wealth, but I'll also be stacking some new Bitcoin not to miss out totally on it. Maybe he bought more Bitcoin along the way, but he's not letting the drive go because of the value of Bitcoin held in the corresponding wallet.

Yeah, it could be that he acquired BTC all these years, but with how serious he has been searching for his lost hard drive, a lot of people will really doubt that. He has to totally give up on the search in order to move forward; if you still have your mind on what you lost, it is kinda impossible to move forward, the hard drive is lost and can never be found, so why the need to continue looking for it.

[jstyler]

i was thinking the same thing, maybe if he was given access to the dump site, the drive would be beyond repair by now, dissolved in all that waste and chemical soup, but still a fascinating thought experiment, would the effort be worth the potential risks to the environment and the residents nearby, quite a complicated situation

[Pmalek]

It's hard to accept such a loss but his chances of locating the drive and recovering any data from it are very, very low. The drive has been exposed to rain, heat, humidity, and various chemicals and bacteria for a decade. Electronic components have surely corroded and everything else has degraded or been damaged after tons and tons of garbage pilled up on top of it over years. 

[Synchronice]

I think he needs to work on his mental health because it's clear that he has serious problems. Yes, I understand that he lost millions of dollars by that accident and I also understand that we shouldn't give up but c'mon, let's be real, there is a 99.99999% chance that he won't find it. If miracles exists, his drive might be alive but c'mon, who will give him that drive? If anyone finds, no one will return it back but I'm 100% sure his drive doesn't exist anymore, especially now when 12 years have passed. A few days are okay but 12 years? That's ridiculous. He needs to let it pass, hire a therapist and continue life with his reality.

[Glowy]

I think he needs to work on his mental health because it's clear that he has serious problems. Yes, I understand that he lost millions of dollars by that accident and I also understand that we shouldn't give up but c'mon, let's be real, there is a 99.99999% chance that he won't find it. If miracles exists, his drive might be alive but c'mon, who will give him that drive? If anyone finds, no one will return it back but I'm 100% sure his drive doesn't exist anymore, especially now when 12 years have passed. A few days are okay but 12 years? That's ridiculous. He needs to let it pass, hire a therapist and continue life with his reality.

Oh my world, you got me laughing, but at the same time you are absolutely right. He needs a therapist. Someone mentioned on this thread that if he invested the funds he intended spending on this search, he will be on his way to big fortune. And that is correct 💯. Over a decade is a long time to let go, though it's a very difficult thought but what's best? Hanging on to nothing?