Man throws away hard drive containing $7.5 million worth of bitcoins

It turns out that there's a hard drive worth $7.5 million sitting in a landfill site right now. James Howells collected 7500 bitcoins back in 2009 but threw away the HDD containing his fortune earlier this year because it had just been sat in a drawer for years. Unfortunately for him, bitcoins hit a $1000 value this week making his old collection worth a ton of money.

Hoswells dismantled his PC after spilling a drink on it and then sold most of the working parts as spares but kept his hard drives around for a while before throwing them away:

“I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought – totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house. Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment – I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it… so it got thrown in the bin.”

After checking all of his backup files Hoswells went on to search his local landfill site in one last effort to find the drive but when he got there the sites manager didn't have good news:

“The manager explained that things that were sent to landfill three or four months ago could be three to five feet deep.”. If he had the funds, James would be able to hire an evidence search team of around 15 to 20 people with dogs and diggers to help search but unfortunately that's an expensive service with no definite payout at the end of it.

KitGuru Says: The moral of the story here is, if you have some bitcoins- make sure you keep them. The bitcoin market is constantly fluctuating, value will likely go down again at some point but if you wait a while, chances are your coins will be worth something again.

Source: BBC

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