James Howells, who lives in Wales, England, has lost its private key of a wallet containing 7,500 Bitcoin worth more than $280 million. He claimed he discarded his drive into the trash, holding the private key of BTC wallet during house cleaning.
Howells reached out to city authorities and asked them to let him find the drive from the trash. According to him, he was having two similar hard drives and discarded the one holding the “private key.” He explained that he mistakenly trashed the hard drive while cleaning his house back in 2013.
Lost 7,500 Bitcoin
In 2013, the price was very low and but the current worth of 7,500 Bitcoin is more than $280 million as the top digital asset is trading above $38,000. Howells seems optimistic that he would find his lost Bitcoin from the landfill area.
Lying so many years in the trash area, the drive may get damaged, but he is hopeful that the glass platter, where the data is stored, may be saved. The data recovery specialists could eject data out of the platter by reading it.
He cannot search by itself as permission from the city council is necessary. He announced to offer more than $70 million to city management to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic. Furthermore, he is also ready to take full responsibility for all expenses used in searching out the landfill.
All offers of Howells have been rejected by the Newport City Council so far. The council cited the environmental issues and said the “excavation project” could cost millions of pounds. And it is not yet confirmed whether the drive is present there or not. The Newport City Council has also clarified that this cannot come under “our licensing permit.”
While talking to CNBC, Howells said the concerned authority has turned down all his offers and said straight “no” without even listening to him. But he is determined for the excavation of the landfill spot because he believes his Bitcoin worth more than $280 is lying there.
According to a New York Times report on Tuesday, a programmer from San Francisco has lost the password of the hard drive. The hard drive has a key phrase for a wallet containing 7,003 BTC worth approximately $267 million.
As Bitcoin’s network is a fully decentralized system, no one can rescue people if they forget the private key of a wallet.