A British man who threw away a challenging drive with bitcoin worth 230 million pounds in it is when once again attempting to convince neighborhood authorities to let him search for the device in a landfill internet site. James Howells, a 35-year-old IT engineer from Newport, Wales, started mining the cryptocurrency in 2009, according to Metro News. He was cleaning his workplace in 2013 when he accidentally threw away the challenging drive with bitcoin that is now worth a modest fortune.
The value of bitcoin has soared in current years, although it was virtually worthless when Mr Howells started mining it . According to news agency AFP, the virtual currency barrelled to new highs to rise more than 400 % more than the previous year, ahead of sliding some 20 % and then settling about $36,000.
Mr Howells says that he had 7,500 bitcoins which, at today’s rates, would be worth more than $280 million. He claims he had two identical challenging drives and mistakenly threw away the a single which has the cryptographic “private key” he requirements to access his bitcoin, reports CNBC.
He is confident that he can recover the bitcoin even just after all these years – but so far the Newport City Council has refused to let him search the landfill internet site he believes consists of his challenging drive.
“There is a good chance the platter inside the drive is still intact,” Mr Howells told CNBC. “Data recovery experts could then rebuild the drive or read the data directly from the platter.”
The 35-year-old has even provided to donate 25% of the bitcoins – worth about $70.8 million – to the city, but so far to no avail.
The Newport City Council has rejected repeated requests from Mr Howells to let him appear by way of the garbage dump which could include the challenging drive he threw out eight years ago.
“The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area,” a council spokesperson stated.
“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.”
Mr Howells is nonetheless producing a final-ditch work to convince the council. He says he has identified a hedge fund prepared to fund the excavation so the council would not have to spend for it.
“I’d like the opportunity to sit down with the decision makers and present to them an action plan for what we want to do. I hope we can get that,” he says.