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LONDON — A British man who accidentally threw out a hard drive with a trove of bitcoin on it is once again urging local city officials to let him search for it in a landfill site.
James Howells, a 35-year-old IT engineer from Newport, Wales, said he discarded the device while clearing out his home in 2013. He claims he had two identical laptop hard drives, and that he mistakenly put the one containing the cryptographic “private key” needed to access and spend his bitcoins in the trash.
After all these years, Howells is still confident he’d be able to recover the bitcoin. Though the external part of the hard drive may be damaged and rusted, he believes the glass platter inside may still be intact.
“There is a good chance the platter inside the drive is still intact,” he told CNBC. “Data recovery experts could then rebuild the drive or read the data directly from the platter.”
Howells says he had 7,500 bitcoins which, at today’s prices, would be worth more than $280 million. He says the only way to regain access to it would be through the hard drive he threw in the trash eight years ago.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-...ffort-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-hard-drive.html
James Howells, a 35-year-old IT engineer from Newport, Wales, said he discarded the device while clearing out his home in 2013. He claims he had two identical laptop hard drives, and that he mistakenly put the one containing the cryptographic “private key” needed to access and spend his bitcoins in the trash.
After all these years, Howells is still confident he’d be able to recover the bitcoin. Though the external part of the hard drive may be damaged and rusted, he believes the glass platter inside may still be intact.
“There is a good chance the platter inside the drive is still intact,” he told CNBC. “Data recovery experts could then rebuild the drive or read the data directly from the platter.”
Howells says he had 7,500 bitcoins which, at today’s prices, would be worth more than $280 million. He says the only way to regain access to it would be through the hard drive he threw in the trash eight years ago.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-...ffort-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-hard-drive.html
