off topic
During my regular rounds for TLG through Swedish press, I found this anecdote. A friend of mine had only thrown away 8 at the time.)
"Oops – he happened to throw bitcoin worth billions at the dump
Just over ten years ago, a hard drive with thousands of bitcoins ended up in landfills. Now a British man is waging a desperate battle against his hometown to try to get them back.
16 October 2024
Some decisions can be regretted for the rest of your life. Just ask James Howells, a computer engineer who lives in the Welsh city of Newport in the UK.
Just over ten years ago, Howells and his then-partner decided to throw away various broken gadgets from his home office. One of the things that went into a black garbage bag was one of several hard drives that collected dust in a desk drawer.
Had 7,500 bitcoin in crypto wallet
The next day, the partner went to the city's landfill. James Howells didn't think any more about it – but that would change.
As a technology enthusiast, Howells had taken an early interest in the cryptocurrency bitcoin. In a couple of years, his holdings had grown to 7,500 bitcoin. He stored these in a crypto wallet in the form of a hard drive that was in his office.
In the fall of 2013, his digital treasure cache was worth the equivalent of just over $14.6 million. At that time, James Howells began to suspect trouble. What had actually happened to the storage unit that contained all the bitcoins?
To his dismay, Howells discovered that he had accidentally mixed up his hard drives during the deep cleaning. The one with all the bitcoins was no longer at home – but had ended up in the dump, writes
The New Yorker .
Must go through 100 tons of rubbish
Since then, James Howells has waged an increasingly desperate battle, trying to convince Newport City Council to dig up the landfill to snoop on the hard drive. According to his own statement, Howells has offered the city to put together a team that can dig through 100 tons of garbage.
He has also promised a juicy ransom: If he gets his way and the storage device is found, the city will pay ten percent of what the crypto coins are worth.
Newport has so far ignored James Howell's repeated applications. Therefore, he has now decided to sue the city for just over SEK 6 billion – a sum that corresponded to the value of SEK 7,500 when the application was submitted.
"The municipality is sitting on my stolen property"
According to Newport's municipal council, the work would cost at least SEK 135 million and is estimated to take between 18 and 36 months to complete. After the excavation, it would also require at least another year of work to restore the soil on and around the soptation.
"The municipal executive board has made it clear to James Howells several times that the excavation is impossible to carry out. It would also cause a major environmental impact on surrounding areas," says a spokesperson from the city of Newsport in a comment.
But Howells doesn't give up. If the hard drive were to be found, he estimates that there is still an 80 percent chance that the digital coins can be retrieved from it.
"I see it as the municipality has been sitting on my stolen property for ten years,"
James Howells told The Sun ."
För drygt tio år sedan hamnade en hårddisk med tusentals bitcoin på soptippen. Nu för en brittisk man en desperat kamp mot sin hemstad för att försöka få dem tillbaka.
www.nyteknik.se
Ooops - $503,928,825 thrown away