Man offers local authorities £50m to help in his hopeless quest for lost bitcoin fortune

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James Howell once again requests to put the environment in danger for his lost stash, now worth over $286m (£209m).

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After the recent bitcoin password fiasco, it looks like yet another poor soul is having a hopeless time getting their rightfully owned bitcoin back before the market price dips down again. 

According to The Guardian, computer engineer James Howells just offered Newport council $68m (£50m) to help him scour a landfill site, in the hopes of recovering his mistakenly discarded laptop hard drive and 7,500 bitcoins along with it.

The find, should the HDD even be in working condition, would be worth over $286m (£209m). So, you might not be surprised to learn this isn't the first time Howell has appealed to the council for help finding it. But this is the first time he's offered a 25% share for its safe return.

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He told the Guardian “If I could access the landfill records I could identify the week that I threw the hard drive away" and the "serial number of the bin that it was in," which would lead him to a grid reference where the HDD would be located.

Sounds simple, right? Just like a search and retrieve task in a videogame.

Not so. Being now buried under 7 years of putrescent waste, an excavation would cause massive environmental damage, allowing millions of tons of methane and CO2 to escape into the atmosphere. 

Understandably, Newport council are not prepared to break so many licencing regulations on the possibility that the hard drive is found and in working condition. Considering it would cost the council a darn site more than Howells has offered, they've made it abundantly clear that he's on his own.

Forget about it, man. It's probably corroded by now.

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Katie Wickens
Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.