Man Accidentally Throws Out Hard Drive With 7,500 Bitcoin, Offers $70M If City Can Find It

KEY POINTS

James Howells of Newport, Wales, mined 7,500 Bitcoin in 2013 when the cryptocurrency was not yet worth a lot
Skyrocketing bitcoin prices renewed his calls to local authority to allow him to excavate a landfill site and search for the hard drive
Millions of bitcoins have been lost due to lost hard drives or passwords

British IT worker James Howells is offering $70 million to the city of Newport in Wales to excavate a landfill site where a hard drive containing bitcoin he personally mined is most likely located.

Howells, who mined 7,500 BTC in 2013, is requesting the Newport City Council to allow him to dig a specific location of the landfill where he thinks the hard drive he accidentally threw away years ago can be found, CNN reported.

In exchange, he has offered 25% of the current value of the lost bitcoins to the city, which he proposed could be given to the residents. In today’s Bitcoin value, that amount will be around $70 million.

“This would work out to approx £175 ($239) per person for the entire city (316,000 population),” he said, before adding that local authority has refused the offer.

Half of the recovered funds will go to the investors who will fund the digging of the landfill. This means Howells will be left with 25% of the worth of the bitcoins.

If it is found, Howells will present it to recovery specialists who will rebuild the drive from scratch to attempt to recover the data needed to access the cryptocurrencies. That is if it’s recovered.

When asked about his request, the Newport City Council confirmed that Howells has reached out to the city multiple times since 2013 for the recovery of the hard drive in the landfill.

The council said it is not possible to excavate the landfill under its licensing permit, not to mention the potential environmental impact to nearby areas should a project be undertaken. This is because while the excavation project is going to look for the hard drive, whether they find it or not is another story.

“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds -- without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order,” a spokeswoman for Newport City Council told CNN.

It was earlier reported that around 20% of all the 18.5 million BTC already in existence are considered lost because of forgotten passwords.

Bitcoin’s price has increased by 21% since the year began and 299% over the last 365 days.