Welshman searches for hard drive with £4m-worth of bitcoins stored

[muriel_volestrangler]

A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

James Howells's hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins - which is a virtual form of currency for use online.

It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out.
...
"When I went to the tip the manager took me up to the current landfill site and when I saw it - it's about the size of a football field - my first thought was 'no chance'," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289

[RKP5637]

1. ... reminds me of one person's garbage can be another's treasure ... finders keepers? n/t

[seveneyes]

2. No sympathy or excuse for not having a backup of the data

Everyone knows to back up important data. Especially someone who knows how to deal with bitcoins.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. But in 2009, he didn't think it was important data

So he moved to a new hard drive, and didn't copy it over. And after that, his backups were of the new drive. I reckon few individuals keep the backups of old drives around for ever.

[pinboy3niner]

4. He must be virtually devastated

[NBachers]

5. Oh, a wise guy, eh?

Nyuk nyuk nyuk

[pinboy3niner]

6. As the bard wrote, "All the world's a Stooge..."

[NBachers]

8. A Stooge Thanksgiving

[ryan_cats]

7. I was wondering how bitcoins were stored. I thought it was on a website.

I was wondering how bitcoins were stored. I thought it was on a website. It's much better that you keep them locally but you need to back them up and there is no excuse not to with DVD and Blue Ray burners that can backup 50GB on one disk.

I assume the bitcoins are serialized, yes? Otherwise you could use your local ones again and again.

I didn't know that the value of bitcoins is variable, seems like a stock share.

[rucky]

9. Sounds like the makings of a good movie plot.

[MineralMan]

10. Easy Come, Easy Go.

[SheilaT]

11. I'm reminded of the stories I've heard

about people storing cash in an oven.

Sometimes people unfortunately do dumb things.