James Howells, the man who wants to search a landfill for cryptocurrency, has become well known on the internet – and perhaps the story will soon have a happy ending.
Welshman James Howells has been searching for his Bitcoin hard drive for over a decade. Could the search soon be over?
Taking Out The Trash – Consequences Worth Millions
Would you spend 12 years searching through a landfill if $732 million were at stake? That's exactly what 39-year-old Welshman James Howells is doing. After Bitcoin came onto the market in 2009, he mined it on his own equipment and accumulated 8,000 virtual coins. Today, those coins would be worth a total of $732 million. However, when his colleague threw away the hard drive containing the private key to Howells' Bitcoin wallet, he took it upon himself to find his storage medium in a landfill – so far without success.
Not That Easy
Howells has already been involved in several legal disputes, as attempts have been made on several occasions to prevent him from continuing his search at the landfill site. But the idea of soon becoming one of the richest people in the world keeps him going. Robot dogs have reportedly already been deployed, as the Welshman refuses to give up.
And yet he will not have expected this setback: the city of Newport plans to close the landfill and build a solar park on the same site instead. Not on his watch: he has announced his intention to buy the landfill so he can continue searching. And it seems he is now getting support for this plan.
Several Rays Of Hope
On the one hand, he apparently got some investors on board, not only to make the purchase, but also to use high-tech equipment to find the lost key to paradise. The investors would simply get their money back after a possible discovery. On the other hand, there is another ray of hope: after reportedly rejecting several hundred offers in the past, this predicament may have led him to agree to a BBC documentary that will report in full on his project. The documentary will focus on the past, but also on how the 39-year-old is planning to find the hard drive after all.
This documentation could not only serve to somehow profit from his name, his fate, and his search, but also to draw attention, as he still wants to convince the various judges to allow him to continue searching and perhaps even buy the landfill.
Would you also search through a landfill for over a decade to get your hands on your fortune?