In 2013, James Howells hit the headlines with an extraordinary story. Howells is a Bitcoiner from the beginning. He had mined more than 7,500 Bitcoins in 2009 with his laptop. At that time, Bitcoin was still easy to extract and was worth almost nothing.
7500 Bitcoins in a Newport landfill
According to The Guardian, they would have mined them on a Dell laptop for more than a week, but had to stop because his girlfriend was complaining that the computer was emitting too much noise and heat. In 2010, he accidentally spills lemonade on his laptop. He then dismounts the computer for cleaning and puts the hard disk in which the Bitcoins were located in a drawer.
During a major spring cleaning, he decides to get rid of computer equipment including the famous hard drive with 7500 Bitcoins inside. Some time later, he came across a television report about a price record for Bitcoin. It was then that he realized what he had done. He then started looking for a copy of the hard drive or something that could give him access to his lost Bitcoins but nothing to do ...
By the time he threw the 7,500 bitcoins, there were already nearly $ 600,000. By the time his story hit the headlines, there was more than $ 5 million worth, all lost in a landfill in Newport. Despite his efforts, he never managed to recover his money:
"I talked to one of the guys at the dump, I explained to him my situation. And he got me into his truck to take me to the landfill site. This is a pit the size of a football field, and he told me that in view of the date I got rid of the hard drive, it should be about three or four feet deep. "
To go dig and look for his hard drive, a team of 15 people equipped with equipment would have been necessary. Unable to finance such an operation, he abandoned his bitcoins and set up an address for donations:
James Howells
@howelzy
@alexhern if anyone wants to donate to my Bitcoin recovery fund...
15JHTg6g4zokAM23vJVcL8DbAAjA4BhsLH - not that I'm expecting anything :)
14:32 - 27 nov. 2013
19 19 réponses 13 13 Retweets 4 4 j'aime
At the time of writing this article, bitcoin is worth more than $ 9,700 and has even reached $ 10,000. This hard disk, which contains 7,500 BTC, is now worth $ 72 million and, as far as we know, it has not yet been found.
At the time, a spokesman for the Newport City Council pointed out that treasure hunters would not be allowed to enter the landfill and that if it were easy to retrieve it, it would have been found.
"I'm at the point where I have to either laugh or cry. Why am I not outside with a shovel? I think I'm just resigned. I would never find it again "Howells
An enthusiast of cryptocurrencies
At the time, Howells made it clear that he believed Bitcoin was the future of money. In his own words, he could only go higher because it was the next evolution of the Internet. He even added:
"When I discovered Bitcoin for the first time, I knew right away. There were already big companies at the time like Google and Facebook, which were already the market leaders. The only thing that was missing was a currency for the Internet. "
In 2013, Howells revealed he was thinking of launching a website, www.returnmyBitcoin.com, hoping someone would find the hard drive. He has now resigned himself and has definitively done away with all this money that could have changed his life.
You can find a study of the number of Bitcoin lost in the following article: [Prophecy # 5] Charlie Shrem: under $ 100,000 bitcoin is "cheap"