Drives probably rusted away to nothing by now, even if he miraculously could find it the odds of getting anything from it are probably less than him winning the lottery.
What does “let him try and find the hard drive” really mean? Does he just want access to the landfill or is he expecting some kind of cooperation with the workers? How disruptive is he going to be?
Very disruptive. Landfills typically bury the day’s trash at the end of the day and it’s just layers and layers of garbage, like lasagna. You might be able to work on Monday’s trash slice, but by the time Thursday rolls around, it’s time to add a layer on top of Monday.
Digging could interrupt the entire landfill process if it’s still an active landfill, meaning the daily garbage has to be redirected elsewhere, because landfills aren’t just a hole in the ground, they are a feat of engineering.
I’m a simple man. I see Practical Engineering, I up vote.
My favourite part from this story covered on another site was
Howells says that if only the council had entertained his excavation requests, “Newport would look like Dubai.” Currently, it still looks like Newport.
Does he really think $500M would significantly change a city? As if the city would get any part of it, or that Dubai is something to desire…
Yes, he’s stupid.
This is the type of “buried treasure” story that kids have these days.
I just imagine a movie like The Goonies but instead of talking about a cave full their treasure, they tell stories about the “flash drive full of gold” that’s buried somewhere in the deepest reaches of the garbage dump.
“This is our time! Down here, this is our time!”
I remember hearing about this guy years ago. He probably is now devoting 10 (?) years of his life (I did not look it up) searching for his lost bitcoin, but I have got the feeling, that he will never find them.
But boy, if he does…
This is such a monkeys paw. You have a drive with $500 million USD of Bitcoin, but the drive is somewhere in the local landfill.
Such a curse, I can’t imagine the regret they feel every day getting up for work.
After 10 years though, isn’t it just gone/destroyed? Rain/corrosion would have destroyed the drive by now.
It’s already corroded from the factory…hard drive platters use iron oxide. Can’t rust rust. The mechanical bits may be trashed but the platter can most likely still be read with specialized recovery equipment.
If he had kept his seed phrase for his wallet, he would be able to recover the funds to a new hard drive. This was very common advice if you did a little bit of research before purchasing btc. I can’t judge too much though as I ignored a dogecoin wallet when they were worthless but 500,000 doge suddenly felt less worthless once doge pushed past 5-10 cents, but by that time, my wallet was gone and I had lost my seed.
200k Doge, all gone, would have been a nice gift when it hit 50 cents…
Fun Doge tidbit, they get criticized for having no limit to the supply (new ones keep getting added to the supply) but if they replaced US dollars less new dollars would be created every year than in the current system!
Id have had 100k if i sold at 20 cents. And that doesnt even factor in the thousands of doge i gambled away on pokershibes, a dogecoin poker site.
I have a friend in NY who lost a thumb drive with bitcoin on it in 2011. Every year or two he goes a little nuts and searches his entire apartment for it, but obviously has never found it. I think he threw it away and doesn’t remember, but the exercise of searching helps him exorcise the demons.
I put about 10% of my investment portfolio in bitcoin, personally. It’s way too volatile, at least for me, to go in big, but I can trust that every 3-4 years people are going to go insane buying it and the price will spike. If you’re already invested you can benefit.
10% of your portfolio is big.
I s’pose.
But compared to the silly geese who take an extra mortgage out to dump into crypto every time it hits an ATH, it’s nothing.
it’s already in pieces.
And if not, probably full of trash juice.
I’m so glad I’ve spent my 2 or 3 bitcoins back in the early years for some 60€ software…
Still better odds than winning the lottery!
Even if Howells was able to somehow find the drive, it’s been sitting in a landfill for more than a decade. Still, his team of experts believe there is about an 80 percent chance that data from the drive would be recoverable.
Is this copium?
500 million justifies using some very fancy data recovery means, as long as he’s sure it’s the right drive.
Its not like i am naive to economy but i cant help but see this:
Ape spends time and energy to convinces other apes to spend time, energy and resources, potentially sacrifice some of the environment and cause hinder to the local population. To dig for a metallic object discarded a decade ago so they can with some hope extract a codestring of information which will unlock some other strings of 0 and 1 that we then collectively agree on means this person has x many digital object which we all agree on has x economic value.
And if they succeed they will al smile because this is winning.
Here is sm either more radical/normal, depending on your perspective. Take the drive that has the wallet/or make it a physical one. Place it in a museum and name it “x Bitcoins”. Value recovered and nothing was lost.
Humans are weird.
You’ll get payed when we find it!
You really don’t want to set precedent here. What if any random person starts having hallucinations about hard drives being lost in the trash. You don’t want anybody to have the right to dig up your landfill
I’m not seeing a negative here? As long as they accept liability why shouldn’t someone be able to dig through landfill?
Air contamination, interruption of ongoing landfill operations, what if the landfills already capped? Do they get to reopen it? What contractors do you allow to do the work? Who takes the liability if they don’t fulfill the work to the specification? What if multiple people want to dig in the landfill at the same time? Who arbitrates? What’s the limit?
the potential liability exceeds the value of what they’re searching for.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/iKcYS
The new El Dorado.
Still, I’m not sure why the council are addressing their statements to “Whales Online”
In a statement to Whales Online
Ooooowwwaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh
Maybe more like the new Oak Island Money Pit.
