James Howells is the name of the man, who in 2013, released the news that his hard drive had gone astray, this bitcoiner extracted some 7,500 Bitcoin with his computer in 2009, at that time the cryptocurrency was just released and It was unappetizing for people. James mino for more than a week and stopped extracting because his girlfriend complained about how noisy and hot the computer could get.
It all starts when in 2009 James spills lemonade on his laptop, so he decided to dismantle it, each of the pieces were stored in one place, however the hard drive remained "sheltered" in a drawer for three years. One day he decides to clean up his old IT, however, he did not remember that the hard drive had money, so he simply threw it in the garbage dump. James knew that something was wrong and at the time of his statements confessed that at some point it crossed his mind: "Do you know when you put something in the basket, and in your head, you say to yourself 'that's a bad idea' ? I really had it. " From that moment he decided to look for a backup copy to access the BTC, however, this idea was frustrated because he could never find such a copy.
The 7,500 BTC, at the time that cast them had a value of more than $ 600,000, and at the time that their story reached the headlines and had a value of more than $ 5 million, these were lost in a landfill in Newport. Howells did what he could to get his money back:
"I had a word with one of the guys there and I explained the situation. And he really took me in his truck to where the dump is, the current ditch they're working on, it's the size of a football field, and he said something three or four months ago would be about three or four feet away. "
To rescue the device would require excavators and a considerable number of men to lend their collaboration to the search. Today the hard drive owns about $ 72 million, considering that as the days go by it will increase its value. It should be noted that treasure hunters are not authorized at the landfill, according to a spokesperson from the Newport Council. "I'm at the point where they either laugh or cry about it." Why am I not there with a shovel now? I think I'm resigned to never being able to find it. "
At that time, Howells still made it clear that he believed that Bitcoin was the future of money. In his own words, he was going to go higher, since it was the next step on the Internet. He even added: "When I found out, I knew it right away. We had everything else in that moment; Google, Facebook, were already the market leaders in their areas. The only thing that was missing was money on the Internet. " The Twitter account associated with James Howells now shows support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency that still holds some of the first Bitcoin properties, at a time when Bitcoin itself handles an accumulation of transactions and high fees.
