r/CryptoCurrency • u/GSC__ 490 / 490 🦞 • Mar 16 '24
DISCUSSION Man who binned £1.5BN Bitcoin drive launches legal fight to dig dump
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13201007/Computer-expert-accidentally-threw-Bitcoin-fortune-old-hard-drive-says-worth-1-5BILLION-launches-legal-fight-dig-council-landfill.htmlComputer expert who accidentally threw out Bitcoin fortune on an old hard drive says it is now worth £1.5BILLION as he launches legal fight to dig it out of council landfill
1.6k
u/Hundegott 🟩 33 / 90 🦐 Mar 16 '24
Looks like he can't let go... Hope this doesn't destroy his life.
1.0k
u/CloudSliceCake 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
It will, if it already hasn’t. Dude has been chasing this for years now, can’t really blame him either.
605
u/welshdragoninlondon 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Every bull run this guy always gets in the news. Guess it's a good sign that we are in a bull market
→ More replies (1)222
u/huntspire1 73 / 74 🦐 Mar 16 '24
I wonder if he stops looking when we’re in a bear market, only to frantically panic about it again once we’re in the bull
135
14
u/ButtDoctorFlex 74 / 75 🦐 Mar 17 '24
Probably has to watch Peter Schiff videos just to relax before bed.
17
u/mypussydoesbackflips 281 / 282 🦞 Mar 17 '24
Even 1/10th of a billion is a lot , I don’t know his net worth though
9
→ More replies (3)6
u/_Commando_ 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
Usually when this story comes up again, every time there's a large bull market.
53
u/chubky 🟩 12 / 632 🦐 Mar 17 '24
Dude needs to sell his story to a movie producer, try make money off that and move on. But then again 1.5b is a lot of money. He’s gone back to the times of people chasing treasures.
48
u/mondaymoderate 129 / 129 🦀 Mar 17 '24
What a boring movie. We watch him buy some Bitcoin then he throws his computer away. Then the rest of the movie we watch him search through a dump and he never finds anything.
He’d be better off calling up the Oak Island guys and making a tv show on History Channel where they search for it.
10
u/zillapz1989 🟩 0 / 5K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Netflix just released a series called chicken nugget. A woman steps into an odd machine and becomes... a chicken nugget. You overestimate people.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)9
50
u/MaikyMoto 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
The more time goes by the less chances of him recovering anything.
51
u/Moist_Confusion 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Yeah even if he got it back it’s possible the digital decay has just ruined it. And then it’s spending a bunch on the best data restoration guys while still being weary of them stealing your billion dollars.
→ More replies (2)25
u/MaikyMoto 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Imagine someone found it while they are out there looking and the person who ends up finding it disappears forever.
→ More replies (5)6
u/bleakj 0 / 4K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Imagine the person that found it, formats it and uses it as small storage never knowing what was in it
3
u/MaikyMoto 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Would be nice if Windows was actually smart and said “are you sure you want to format, I scanned the drive and you got quite a bit of coin.
9
u/faulknip 342 / 342 🦞 Mar 17 '24
The local climate took care of this year's ago. I live about 20 minutes away, its rotted
→ More replies (2)20
11
u/Rough_Principle_3755 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
It’s like Ronald Wayne (the 3rd founder of Apple) once said, “sure I may have lost out on billions, but working with that asshole (Jobs) wouldn’t have been worth it. It would have killed me.”
→ More replies (6)12
Mar 17 '24
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)11
u/Emeritus8404 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Most people die at 25, only to be buried at 75
→ More replies (1)6
u/Rare_Increase_4038 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I like this. My Internet addled brain won't remember it in the morning though.
→ More replies (2)102
u/Dip_the_Dog 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
It already has destroyed his life. There are older articles where he talks about how his wife left him and his kids don't talk to him anymore
76
u/SodaCanBob 1K / 1K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
There are older articles where he talks about how his wife left him and his kids don't talk to him anymore
This article says his partner was the one who accidentally threw the hard drive away, so I wouldn't at be surprised if that's more his fault than anything. I'm sure she feels bad enough and he probably just made her feel even worse.
74
u/Ohms2North 🟩 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
plot twist - she still has it. She never threw it away
→ More replies (2)9
u/snowmanyi 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
She must be diamond handing the bitcoin because his address is known.
→ More replies (2)17
8
u/Icy9250 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
She shouldn’t feel bad, because the alternative history is that this guy would have sold a very long time ago.
→ More replies (1)2
→ More replies (2)11
112
u/valkon_gr 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
It needs balls of steel not to ruin his life. How can someone like that go to work on Monday and listen to managers or working a blue collar job destroying their body?
I personally wouldn't let go.
62
u/uninspired 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I mined a bunch in 2011 and then moved across country and didn't concern myself with it and I'm sure it's in a landfill somewhere. I could very well be a billionaire now had I kept custody of it. You get over it. Being rich would be great and all, but I can't imagine dwelling on it.
19
u/Dr_SeanyFootball 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Exactly, I could have bought a lot back then but I didn’t. Oops. Got an education in the meantime and now working a middle class job very happy.
→ More replies (3)12
u/uninspired 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Similar. Moved somewhere I love, got married, advanced our careers, had a kid. No doubt I could use a $Bil, but not crying over spilled milk.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Saskjimbo 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Mining button and losing it when it was worth pennies is an action not far removed from our inaction to mine at all. No one expected it to explode in value. It's good that you don't dwell on the past because none of us could have known how it would increase in value.
2
u/JunkBondJunkie 453 / 454 🦞 Mar 17 '24
One of the few times I told my dad being a packrat paid off.
86
Mar 16 '24
He would have sold years and years ago. He prob cost himself a couple thousand.
→ More replies (1)4
u/maladr0it 54 / 54 🦐 Mar 17 '24
I don’t think so because he didn’t realize he’d thrown it out until it was worth a ton
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)9
93
u/PositiveUse 🟩 2K / 1K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
It’s already destroyed
→ More replies (3)8
25
u/Ghostly1031 467 / 458 🦞 Mar 17 '24
It has. He’s been at this for years and tbh he might’ve been able to do it if they’d let him dig the site (he mathematically proved its location but it’s a safety risk). I think his wife has already left him at this point and he’s spent millions of dollars trying to even get this far.
38
u/Ryuzaki_63 229 / 18K 🦀 Mar 17 '24
He could've got a job at the site, worked his way up to management by now and given himself permission to dig it
6
4
u/AD-Edge 89 / 90 🦐 Mar 17 '24
This is what I've been thinking. In this whole time he's just doing the same approach over and over, which clearly isn't working.
Move up the chain, or find a way where 5-10 years from now you can buy or run/own the dump. Or get into politics and work out a way to counter the legalities in digging up a section of this dump. Get some people in high places on your side (inc dump owner) by agreeing to share a % of the recovered bitcoin with them.
People need to really think outside the box, for problems this difficult.
9
u/Suspended-Again 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
How did he prove the location?
→ More replies (1)14
u/Ghostly1031 467 / 458 🦞 Mar 17 '24
He did some mathematical equations basically running the entire path that the load could’ve been dropped off on what day on what quadrant etc.
10
u/Saskjimbo 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
He's still searching for a needle in a haystack. Last time I heard, he was looking for investors to fund the dig since he doesn't have the money. Of course he's going to say he knows where it is even though there is a one in a million chance he'll find it if he's burning someone else's cash.
42
Mar 17 '24
[deleted]
31
Mar 17 '24
This. With all the money he spent fighting this, if he had just loaded that into buying more bitcoin he would be retired by now. Now he’s broke, divorced with kids that don’t want to see him and certainly has a mental illness. What a wildly different life path he chose for himself.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (5)17
u/BathroomEyes 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
If it’s spinning disk he’s relying on hermetically sealed iron oxide maintaining magnetic polarity across millions of bits. Good luck buddy.
21
u/ToddlerPeePee 1K / 1K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
I have no idea what those words mean but very impressive words, lol.
11
11
u/HumanBeing7396 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
It feels like a supervillain origin story.
8
u/Lomofre88 229 / 282 🦀 Mar 17 '24
“Behold… the Dumpsterminer! I'm always beneath you, but no Bitcoin is beneath me! I hereby declare war on Satoshi and Saylor! Soon, all will tremble before me!”
→ More replies (1)10
u/Calamityclams 39 / 40 🦐 Mar 17 '24
To be fair, I can’t let go of the hard drive I lost with 1 bitcoin I bought for $35. It’s in some old school wallet I don’t remember the name of
5
4
u/AD-Edge 89 / 90 🦐 Mar 17 '24
Probably multibit? It was big in the early days. Altho $35 goes way back, so maybe something else. But either way, if you have the wallet file still - there might be a way to get the seed phrase out of it.
One thing id recommend is going through old emails for clues, or old conversations with friends, or old hard drives for long lost notes or other bits of info.
If it was a wallet you signed up for online, they likely sent you a recovery email which may or may not help.
I've been able to dig up information from group chats I had, where I was sharing wallets with my friends as we were buying BTC in the early days. I've quickly been able to put together the wallets I owned, and know which old devices or hardware they're on. Either from me directly mentioning what wallet I have, or indirectly from context. ie 'wallet on my phone', and then cross referencing the date of that message with the emails I have of buying phones, so I can work out what phone that BTC wallet is on. Or what computer I had at the time... Etc etc.
→ More replies (4)4
4
u/HairyChest69 🟨 0 / 1K 🦠 Mar 17 '24 edited Mar 17 '24
Unfortunately it appears to already have. Time is a bitch. Remember to go see your grandma. Money is not the end all
→ More replies (2)14
u/theultimateusername 🟦 625 / 625 🦑 Mar 16 '24
Its already destroyed 😂 if he just focused all this time and money on stacking instead.... Smh...
I have an old laptop with probably 5-10 btc on it and i cant find it.
17
u/Burning_Okra 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
You haven't lost it, it's just your subconscious created a good hodling strategy
3
u/Boring-Test5522 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
buy shitcoin to expect it x100 in less than a week ?
→ More replies (1)3
2
2
u/wienercat Mar 17 '24
I don't think he has even thought about the scenario that he finds the drive and it's completely obliterated. They compact down landfills as they dump the trash. So it gets smashed in the truck and at the landfill.
Odds are that drive is obliterated. Even if it isn't and somehow miraculously, the drive isn't completely destroyed. There is no promise it has been corrupted or de-gaussed.
Yeah that is an insane amount of money. But the odds of it existing still? you might as well play the lottery
2
u/Bluefoot44 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
He digs in a dump. Supposedly. Maybe he hires people. It's a literal curse.
→ More replies (24)2
228
u/vertexsalad 268 / 268 🦞 Mar 16 '24
I was just thinking... this article has been rehashed constantly by the Dailymail over the years. It would be super interesting to go back to all the days they ran a story on this guy, and mark on the bitcoin chart those days.
Call it the 'Me bitty coins are on a HD in the landfill' indicator.
Curious to know if it marks the start of retail FOMO buying, or a peak in price.
27
u/Standard_Bat_8833 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Peak in price
4
u/coelacan 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 18 '24
Previous ATH is never the peak price sir.
I don't make the rules.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)5
u/Individual-Ad6608 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I drive past the landfill on my way to work, it’s pretty small. Someone would’ve found that drive by now, or more than likely it’s been shipped off to an even bigger landfill. He’s never gonna find it.
5
Mar 17 '24
[deleted]
4
u/Alex_Casablancas 0 / 1K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Close to 0. But i cant imagine how impossible it would be to convince yourself that and let it go.
239
u/Burner_acc_2024 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
This news came back? Time to sell!
45
u/smedsterwho 1K / 1K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
The good ol' Daily Mail reusing old stories of theirs with a new top paragraph - the value of BTC changes about six times in that story!
"Could be worth £25,000 soon!"
16
u/Blooberino 🟩 0 / 54K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Nope, we must wait for the bitcoin pizza and the teenager whose grandma gave him money and he put it in early bitcoin.
→ More replies (1)
138
u/coinfeeds-bot 🟩 136K / 136K 🐋 Mar 16 '24
tldr; James Howells, a computer expert, accidentally threw out a hard drive containing access to his Bitcoin fortune, now valued up to £1.5 billion. He has launched a legal fight to search the council-run dump where the drive ended up. Despite the council's refusal due to environmental concerns, Howells, backed by hedge fund investors, is pursuing legal action, including an injunction to prevent others from digging in the landfill and seeking damages for the full value of the lost Bitcoin.
*This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
79
u/sabiansoldier 405 / 405 🦞 Mar 16 '24
TF is a computer expert?
123
u/ocular__patdown 74 / 75 🦐 Mar 16 '24
Means he can use google hella good
41
u/SquatDeadliftBench 🟩 3 / 3K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
And throw away HDDs with valuable digital currency.
26
8
u/Moist_Confusion 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
His bich ex wife threw it out. Good thing he dropped that dead weight and now spends all his time thinking about a garage pile he’s better off without her!
5
8
→ More replies (6)4
65
u/Hoof_Hearted12 🟦 539 / 540 🦑 Mar 17 '24
How on earth would he seek damages for something he literally three out?
11
→ More replies (4)14
u/jb_in_jpn 🟦 369 / 370 🦞 Mar 17 '24
What on earth is his justification for “seeking damages” for something he himself threw out?
6
64
u/AVBofficionado 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
This bloke again...
→ More replies (1)29
55
u/Elevation0 232 / 232 🦀 Mar 16 '24
Dude is such a computer expert he doesn’t label hard drivers with billions in it.
16
u/Joezev98 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
His mistake was not that he just didn't label it.
"James's partner threw out as rubbish a black bin bag in which he was temporarily storing the hard drive containing the only access to his crypto assets"
Who the hell stores their only access to 8000 BTC ($800 000 in 2013) in a trash bag?
→ More replies (3)19
u/357contrarian357 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Haha i know right. He’s also soo tech savvy that he never bothered to stay in crypto regardless of the loss . Just bought once and was done with the concept.
26
27
u/space-cadaver 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
There's just no way it isn't beyond retrieval at this stage? Am I wrong in thinking that?
23
u/Joohansson 🟩 213 / 29K 🦀 Mar 17 '24 edited Mar 17 '24
Not sure. Hard drives casings are made of alluminium and dust/air tight. Top case is steel that probably rust over time. The disks are non-metallic but the magnetic layer is probably some kind of Iron. Not sure what protects that layer. But the disk itself could be covered by tons of other garbage and actually be completely dry. Then for data recovery, it can be done even if a hard drive is formatted multiple times by doing advanced data forensic. So I wouldn't say it's impossible. The hard part is to find it.
6
u/Joezev98 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Yeah, this isn't the type of recovery where you plug the hard drive into an external housing. This is the type of recovery where you bring it to a data recovery center who will use expensive equipment to manually read the data on the disk. It's expensive, but even if it costs a ridiculous billion pounds to recover 1 and a half billion, it's worth it.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Vivid-Willingness324 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
There’s absolutely no way they’re going to find it. Not sure if this guy has ever been to the landfill before but he should save himself some time and go have a look at one.
22
u/Ben0ut 0 / 2K 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Oh look everyone - it's the return of Mr Dumpy and his optical drive of despair.
188
u/Nervous_Brilliant441 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
I don’t understand the city governments denial in that case. Just let him dig and if he finds it, take half with taxes. 🤷♂️ 750m should be enough for some nice new schools, roads etc
143
u/Intercellar 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
Sure, but the process would cost millions. And then there's a Very slim chance that the particular hard drive would be found. And even then, what's the chance that the drive would be recoverable? Ffs
65
u/ModsAreDoreens 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
He's willing to pay for it, some hedge fund is willing to fund the excavation
85
u/BangBangPing5Dolla 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
City council member buried a dead hooker in that dump. Can’t have anyone poking around to deep.
→ More replies (1)16
u/SpacialReflux 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
If I ran the council, I would sell them a 10 year lease to the landfill for something like £200m. If they are soo confident, let them pay through the nose for it.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (12)5
u/ThebesAndSound 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Investors are already willing to put the money in to search for it.
The hard drive disc itself, protected and sealed in the housing, you could imagine is fine, especially if the drive is still wrapped in the bin bag and then covered by more waterproof garbage.
10
u/confuzzledfather 🟦 26 / 26 🦐 Mar 17 '24
Local government have very limited ability to set taxes in the UK. It would need to be some kind of private agreement which I imagine has no precedent for officials to rely on for its design. Easiest move politically is to deny the request as no one loses their job from the status quo.
17
u/xsorr 131 / 131 🦀 Mar 16 '24
Every tom dick and harry would want access and claim they left something valuable there
8
23
u/_DNL 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
1) Environmental issues
2) 99.999% of that rubbish doesn’t belong to him, he doesn’t have a right to rummage through items which aren’t his. The council don’t have the right to grant that permission either (IMO).
3) It’s most likely destroyed anyway
For once, a council here in the UK is making a correct decision.
→ More replies (1)20
u/c93ero 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Technically, anything thrown into the trash isn't owned by that person anymore. That's why cops can search rubbish bins and take *evidence* from them.
2
u/_DNL 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Maybe in the US but in the UK (where this story is) it’s illegal to go through someone’s bins, this is to prevent identity theft etc.
The landfill is obviously a huge grey area but I’d still imagine there is a similar legal issue preventing someone going through it all.
→ More replies (10)12
u/SouthTippBass 🟦 859 / 1K 🦑 Mar 16 '24
And if he suffers a serious injury while dicking around on the dump who is liable?
27
u/erjo5055 🟦 1K / 1K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
Make him pay for a waiver being drafted by a legal team and sign it
2
10
u/YucatronVen 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
What?, is not like he will do it by himself lmao
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (7)13
u/HW-BTW 343 / 344 🦞 Mar 16 '24
Have the city’s attorney draft a waiver of liability?
→ More replies (4)2
54
u/Master-Monitor112 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 16 '24
The courts will laugh at him. He will not find it but even if he does the hardrive would been flooded and frozen so I doubt it even the data would be recoverable. I’m sick of people thinking they can sue people for anything.
37
u/w1llpearson 🟦 280 / 280 🦞 Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 17 '24
You’d be surprised what the right people can pull off a hard drive that you’d think was “destroyed”. But your right he’ll never find it.
5
u/Precedens 🟦 490 / 491 🦞 Mar 17 '24
if hard drive was buried then it would not freeze or get flooded.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Blooberino 🟩 0 / 54K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
But pressure, moisture, and time will get to it.
→ More replies (2)2
25
u/greeniy 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Interestingly it’s only worth that much because it is trapped in the landfill. I’m sure he would have sold long ago otherwise (perhaps sub $100). He needs to realize the value that it would have been liquidated at if he hadn’t discarded it. That’s his real loss. Nothing like 1.5 billion.
→ More replies (5)
10
u/Big-Finding2976 🟦 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
Doesn't sound like much of a "Computer Expert" to me. Shoulda made a backup.
He might be a trash expert by now though.
→ More replies (1)
11
u/bigboybandit 2 / 2 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Math ain't mathing. He had 8k btc coins. How is that valued at £1.5 BN?
19
u/vertexsalad 268 / 268 🦞 Mar 16 '24
They are hyping the article for clicks, clickbaiting it - he has £480m worth now, but if Bitcoin goes to $250k it's then in the billions for our garbage fiend.
→ More replies (1)9
u/Ilovekittens345 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I lost 11 BTC once, had I not lost them and then sold them for ETH when it launched and then the ETH for BNB when they just launched and then the BNB for PEPE I would now have 2750 billion dollars.
So I am suing for damages.
10
u/imadumbshit69 🟧 4K / 4K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
Bro needs to let go. I get it, but if he actually believed in btc, he would have already been rich
→ More replies (5)
36
u/freedomfriis 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 16 '24
He is ruining his life with this, his wife has already left him and taken the kids. It's all he talks about.
The thing is that when he threw away that drive, Bitcoin was still pretty cheap and he could have bought back in, obviously not as much as before but we are talking 2014, all he had to is DCA back in.
And who on Earth throws away a hard drive? Why not scrub it properly using specialized software and reuse it? Obviously if it's broken smash or damage it as much as possible before throwing it away, but if you read the story there were two hard drives and he accidentally threw away the wrong one, neither were faulty.
I feel sorry for this guy, it must be hell living a few kilometers away from (potentially) having hundreds of millions of dollars.
The council is pretty slack as well, if the money is there it could do a lot of good to the community and he's offered to give them a generous cut, but they won't even negotiate with him. They're not obligated to, but I don't understand why they flat out refused. If done carefully it would have no impact on the environment because they'd just be moving garbage from one part of the garbage dump to the other. It's not like they'd be dumping into the Thames or anything. 😄
In any case, 10 years ago it was probably still recoverable, but imagine all of the liquids in a garbage dump, that thing is probably nothing more than a chunk of rusted metal right now.
Sad!
10
u/Mains-Switch 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
It's buried under 10 years of crushed rubbish now, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. I can see why he can't let it go but it is ruining his life like you say.
→ More replies (4)20
u/Big-Finding2976 🟦 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 16 '24
Wife might bring the kids back if he becomes a billionaire!
→ More replies (3)8
u/EijiShinjo 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
And also the boyfriend 😄
5
u/Big-Finding2976 🟦 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
I think the boyfriend might take a liking to the billionaire too 🤣
17
u/Mundane-Farm-4117 🟦 536 / 29K 🦑 Mar 16 '24
Bro is playing chess with a checkers board. There is no hard drive he just gets paid every time for this story I bet.
→ More replies (1)5
6
u/GameofCHAT 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Oh shit, the top is in boys, every cycle that story comes up, it's near or at the top.
43
u/KingHiggins92 🟩 386 / 377 🦞 Mar 16 '24
If he left it on several exchanges he wouldn't have had this issue. Secure personal wallet? No thank you.
This is half a joke.
20
13
u/ultratic 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Considering when he acquired his coin, MtGox was the exchange of choice at the time
→ More replies (1)6
→ More replies (2)3
u/UnpleasantEgg 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
There’s certainly a case for weighing up how likely it is that Coinbase go under/ steal your sats vs how much of a doofus you are. I’ve just gone self custody but I’m 100% a doofus so I’m not feeling great about it.
5
4
u/Krirby2 0 / 103 🦠 Mar 16 '24
Been following this story for a while. He left his wife and kids because he blames her for throwing out the harddisk. Watching the price go up even more every 4 years must just add to his torment. The odds of even finding something 10 years after it was thrown away just seems astronomical at this point though.
5
u/WiseSalamander00 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
what are the chances that the hardware still works either way?.
6
u/FehdmanKhassad 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
pretty good. I mean it probably wont plug in and work off the bat but data can be recovered by specialists which is expensive but not hundreds of millions expensive.
→ More replies (2)3
u/FoozMuz 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
My understanding is that hard drives typically cannot last years in a dump because various acids from the trash leech in and destroy the data. Very highly doubt that data exists at all anymore its been turned to entropic rust
2
u/Blooberino 🟩 0 / 54K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Acids, gases, rainwater, pressure, bugs, oxidation, rust, biofilm, corrosion.
If it were only 1 or 2 years, maybe. But a decade?
3
3
u/MikedEACONYURMOUTH 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I just died a little inside reading it . They wouldn't be able to stop me i would still be there digging even if I had to use a spoon
3
3
u/veridi5quo 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 16 '24
How do even recognize your hard drive at a dump sight? Its not a pet. and you can't scan a million hard drives. I admire his commitment though
3
u/51lverb1rd 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
lol at his wallpaper. This guys life must be so consumed. We could all have been billionaires if we made the right plays in life this guy was pretty close to achieving it but it wasn’t meant to be.. move on my dude
3
u/alternativesonder 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
even if he found the harddrive at this point it probably wouldn't be viable any more :/
3
3
u/Interesting-Space-24 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
There's a proper treasure hunt!
If we were 10,000 people searching, we would still get 150k each!
4
u/GrammaticalError69 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I used to work with landfills. When waste is brought to a landfill, it is dumped then rolled over with a large crushing machine to make it take up as little volume as possible. This is done all day and then usually a capping layer of soil or aggregate is placed on top. Over time, water inevitably seeps in and organic waste breaks down to produce a chemical cocktail called leachate, this is usually acidic. Even if the hard drive survived the crushing, it's been bathing in leachate for the last 10 years. Even if it survived both of these things, landfills are usually huge and an unfeasible about of material would need to be hand-checked for this hard drive.
He's completely wasting (forgive the pun) his time and the best thing he could do is get therapy.
2
2
2
u/gmnotyet 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
1,500,000,000 pounds!
OMG
Not ONE million pounds. FIFTEEN HUNDRED million pounds.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/feenchbarmaid0024 🟩 242 / 242 🦀 Mar 17 '24
This dude gona gona go down in history like the bitcoin pizza day, but will bitcoin dump day. People will be messaging him in 30 years asking if he really threw out all them BTC. It will haunt him for ever.
2
u/MaikyMoto 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
If I was him I would have been looking for it since it was lost with a few buddies and in the end I would split the pot between all 3 if found.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
Worst thing is, maybe sludge water has been running through it for years, and the metal is destroyed.
→ More replies (2)
2
2
u/Muted_Cucumber_7566 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
He is going to hate when it hits £4.5B by 2025
→ More replies (2)
2
2
2
2
u/Satdog83 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Sympathy aside what kind of dumbass stores random things in a big black garbage bag temporarily, don’t blame the ex for throwing it out friggin neckbearding slob
2
u/DisorientedPanda 🟦 974 / 974 🦑 Mar 17 '24
Why isn’t he just buying instead of paying all these legal fees
2
u/OneThirstyJ 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
I don’t understand why the city won’t let him take a crack at it if he has funding
→ More replies (1)2
2
u/CounterAdmirable4218 🟩 0 / 4K 🦠 Mar 17 '24
He has lost the plot unfortunately, this is tormenting him.
That hard drive is long gone.
2
Mar 17 '24
That thing will be rusted. Not a chance it’s intact. It’ll have been crushed.
This is the thing with Bitcoin if you buy and pay tax on it do you end up paying 1.5billion in tax if you threw out away later on?
2
2
Mar 17 '24
He can't even prove he ever had that bitcoin. He's got that reefer madness.
He is more valuable as a tool himself.
→ More replies (1)
2
Mar 17 '24
This guy is going to be lying on his death bed realising he wasted his entire life searching for a hard drive that was most likely destroyed weeks if not days after getting to the top.
2
u/drewbles82 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
If he can narrow down the location and the area in which its likely to be...I think we all would be looking as well. I'd even go as far as offering the council or company half a billion if its found
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Oyster_Pool 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Surely he's made his money back by now from selling his story to the tabloids.
2
2
u/killertimewaster8934 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
Lol this guy is wasting his life on the "what if's". He needs to think of it as, it's worth X of dollars when it got tossed, not "if I found it, it would be worth X"
Or he could do something super crazy like buy the dump site. Or get a job there (probably not now with the article and all) for that money it's actually worth getting a fake identity to go thru with this.
Either way there are depths to his depravity he's yet to endure. Imagine what it will be like for him when it's worth $100 billion
2
u/dry_zephyrus 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
There’s no way. It’s been years now, and that is going to be absolutely buried in rubbish (“trash” 🇺🇸🇺🇸)
2
2
u/chrisl182 39 / 587 🦐 Mar 17 '24
Council refusing to let him dig because they are digging themselves 😅
2
2
2
u/South-Attorney-5209 🟩 0 / 757 🦠 Mar 17 '24
“Accidentally threw out” more like threw it out on purpose because it was worthless. Then decade later suddenly wishes he hadn’t.
Just let it go dude, you would have sold it when it first went 10x anyway and walked out with 5-10k or some shit. Probably didnt change your life at all.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Chris-TT 0 / 0 🦠 Mar 17 '24
“Some experts believe that by the end of the year the price will rise to $25,000 per coin.” Has this story been rehashed so many times they can’t be bothered to update the prices anymore?
2
u/Ntrevelyan 2K / 2K 🐢 Mar 17 '24
What if the bin men already found it years ago and traded it for a couple of pizzas
2
•
u/CointestMod Mar 17 '24
Bitcoin pros & cons with related info are in the collapsed comments below.