Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Waste of money
Bungler offers £55m to unearth ‘bitcoin hoard he sent to tip’
A COMPUTER engineer who says he threw out a hard drive containing a fortune is offering a council £55million to dig it out of a rubbish tip.
James Howells, 35, claims the missing gizmo, which he mistakenly chucked away in 2013, contains bitcoin now worth more than £230million.
The digital currency, launched in 2009, has rocketed in value and James is offering hard-up council chiefs a quarter share of the fortune to help dig it up.
He said: “There’s a pot of gold for someone at the end of the rainbow – and that end is in a landfill site.
“I had two identical hard drives and threw out the wrong one. I’m not the only person ever to throw out the wrong thing but it usually doesn’t cost £230million.”
James has repeatedly asked Newport Council in South Wales to help him recover the machine – and he is now offering a quarter share of the fortune if workers can pluck it out.
But so far his requests have been refused. He said: “There is going to be a point when the files on that machine are worth more than a billion pounds. The council’s attitude just does not compute – it does not make sense.”
James, who lives in Newport, believes there’s a good chance the files will still be recoverable.
And he says a hedge fund has offered to pay for the search so the council is not out of pocket.
A council spokeswoman said James had contacted them about the missing hard drive a number of times in the last six years.
She added: “The cost of digging up the landfill and storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds without any guarantee of either discovering the hard drive or finding it still in working order.
“The excavation would also have a huge impact on the surrounding area.”
James is not alone in his bitcoin woes. Yesterday we told how San Francisco programmer Stefan Thomas could lose £221million after forgetting his password and using up eight of 10 attempts he is allowed before his bitcoin account is blocked.
DUMP Site where hard drive is buried