Man Who Lost Bitcoin Fortune In Welsh Tip Explores Purchase of Entire Landfill (theguardian.com) 118
AmiMoJo writes: A computer expert who has battled for a decade to recover a $743 million bitcoin fortune he believes is buried in a council dump in south Wales is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune. James Howells lost a high court case last month to force Newport city council to allow him to search the tip to retrieve a hard drive he says contains the bitcoins.
The council has since announced plans to close and cap the site, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of reaching the bitcoins. The authority has secured planning permission for a solar farm on part of the land. Howells, 39, said on Monday it had been "quite a surprise" to hear of the closure plan. He said: "It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway. I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it's 80/90% full -- but didn't expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site -- as is -- and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table."
The council has since announced plans to close and cap the site, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of reaching the bitcoins. The authority has secured planning permission for a solar farm on part of the land. Howells, 39, said on Monday it had been "quite a surprise" to hear of the closure plan. He said: "It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway. I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it's 80/90% full -- but didn't expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site -- as is -- and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table."
Lunatic (Score:5, Interesting)
Just another crypto lunatic on a futile quest for gold. Even if he miraculously found that HDD, it would probably be beyond hope with all the damage in transit and when being buried with other waste.
Re:Lunatic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lunatic (Score:4, Informative)
It was just a hard drive, not a whole computer
Re: Lunatic (Score:5, Informative)
In civilized places like California, a HDD would get sorted out at a transfer station and sent for metal scrap. They break open bags to make sure items aren't thrown away that shouldn't be, like cans of paint. I've seen it in progress at the transfer station in lake county, which is not exactly known for wokeness.
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Re: Lunatic (Score:4, Funny)
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Clocking at 13 gallons of dog feces per week, is there a difference between dog ownership and a strange hobby?
He said "every two weeks, so "only 6.5 gallons per week.
By most measures, that's a significant quantity of dog shit to contend with. And it's not is if it was stacked up neatly in a corner. I'd even wager the dog shit was randomly dispersed across the available acreage. But hey, rule 34 [wikipedia.org]must also be considered.
Units (Score:5, Funny)
He said "every two weeks, so "only 6.5 gallons per week.
Somehow we've gotten from a hard drive to measuring the value of cryptocurrency in units of dog shit.
This does make sense.
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In civilized places like California, a HDD would get sorted out at a transfer station and sent for metal scrap. They break open bags to make sure items aren't thrown away that shouldn't be, like cans of paint. I've seen it in progress at the transfer station in lake county, which is not exactly known for wokeness.
Transfer stations seem like a big city thing. My trash goes in the back of the truck and gets dumped straight into the landfill.
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I used to live in a very rural area in Montana. The entire county had a single traffic light, and that was switched off at 9PM every night. We had transfer stations there. They're not just for big cities.
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My guess is that you don't actually know what happens to your trash after it goes in the back of the truck.
Hint: there are federal EPA regulations about this kind of thing, and they don't have "BIG CITY ONLY" tags on them.
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My guess is that you don't actually know what happens to your trash after it goes in the back of the truck.
Hint: there are federal EPA regulations about this kind of thing, and they don't have "BIG CITY ONLY" tags on them.
I'm Canadian, and I know exactly what happens to my trash. They fill up the truck and then they drive to a landfill and dump it in the working cell (I configured the wireless mesh network in our city owned landfill, I have some knowledge of their operations). Seems environmentally iffy to transport trash any farther than you actually need to, and I know some of it ends up in the craziest places, but you do you. To be fair, they are searching another local landfill for some bodies right now, I guess a tr
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The trash doesn't really go much farther when there's a transfer station, if they are sited reasonably. They are designed with controlled drainage and traps that contain the offensive stuff, preventing it from going into the landfill at all is better than hoping the liner traps it. Canada is also a big place eh, so I would guess there's a bunch of variety in how the trash is handled there, just like there is here.
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In Europe, and I presume the UK, you can dump old electronics for free at a waste recycling facility. They'd also have disposal facilities for glass, plastic, wood, metal, paint, mattresses etc. that you may for. Plus collection for general waste / recycling / glass. But if you throw something into general waste then it may or may not get processed out. More likely a dump truck unloads the lot into a big machine that shreds or flattens the contents and then that gets dropped and spread around on the landfil
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They break open bags to make sure items aren't thrown away that shouldn't be, like cans of paint.
At my landfill, I have to bring unused paint in on the monthly household hazardous waste day where its collected and stored separately. Then they dump it out on the landfill to keep dust down.
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Being from The Netherlands I was quite surprised regular household waste would still end up on landfills in countries like the UK. Over here, only incineration ashes and stuff that's impossible to handle differently like asbestos end up in landfills. Now, to get to the point, apparently over 50% of household waste in the US still ends up in landfills. That's significantly more than the UK, making neither of your countries "civilized" by your own definition.
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So you just release that carbon into the atmosphere immediately? Got it.
Re: Lunatic (Score:2)
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Sifting through trash for recyclables isn't a wokeness thing. It helps fund the whole enterprise. Metals are especially valuable and easy to rapidly sort out mechanically.
Recycling doesn't have to be woke - it can be a practical way to recover money as well. Its sad to think such progressive things can be considered by some to be distasteful when they reduce taxes for all. It's like claiming fuel effic
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How do we know they didn't pass a huge electromagnet over it at some point before interning it and it's surrounding trash in the landfill, while looking to extract ferrous metal for recycling?
It was probably degaussed years ago in the normal operations of landfilling municipal waste. And that's before the paper air filters on the drive were exposed to all the toxic liquid waste present in a garbage landfill that would have long-ago rotted out.
He's more than welcome to continue tilting at this particular wi
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It's easy to dismiss this as a crypto lunatic, but if there's a chance you could recover that sum of money you'd start engaging in desperate measures too.
Re: Lunatic (Score:2)
Not really. Its not recovering it, he never had it in the first place. It's just crypto inflation. The chance of him finding it is next to nothing and the drive still working - if it's even there - being the same. There however is a VERY big chance that if this dim greedy clown got his way he'd cause serious water and air pollution to the surrounding area. He should just suck it up and move on for everyone's sake.
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There however is a VERY big chance that if this dim greedy clown got his way he'd cause serious water and air pollution to the surrounding area. He should just suck it up and move on for everyone's sake.
Crypto bros - pretty much by definition - value "getting rich quick schemes" much higher than "not creating avoidable additional damage to the planet".
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It's easy to dismiss this as a crypto lunatic, but if there's a chance you could recover that sum of money you'd start engaging in desperate measures too.
Landfill bitcoin guy in the same boat as anyone who didn't mine/buy Bitcoin early in the first place. Most of us aren't doing anything desperate to compensate for the missed opportunity. I hear things didn't turn out so well for the latest guy who let crypto wealth desperation get the best of him. [wikipedia.org]
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Entirely. For all the money this lunatic invested legally, he'd have been better off buying coins.
foregone conclusion (Score:1)
The local council will politely invite him to fuck off and die.
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I can imagine the council may attach stipulation to the deeds before selling the property that it contains a sealed-up landfill; Offer them a fee simple interest subject to condition subsequent or a Defeasible interest that spells out the piece of property contains a landfill Which the new owner does not have the right to disturb for X years any digging project would have to go through council approval with pay for remediation at the new owner's expense in advance (Would be criminal trespassing if th
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If they were open to persuasion it would have happened already. They're not going to let some idiot buy the landfill and dig it all up because he's stupid to hang onto a hard disk which may or may not be somewhere or nowhere on the site.
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They're not going to let some idiot buy the landfill and dig it all up because he's stupid
The council might No longer have a say in that provided they intend to close the landfill and dispose of the property.
So long as that guy can make the best offer once they are soliciting offers for the sale of the property. Perhaps they have a buyer already lined up, but any 3rd party investor the council is selling to will have their price.
Landfill property is fairly undesirable and has lower value than comparable
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Landfills in the UK / Europe etc are typically owned by the local authorities even after they're filled and capped. They become public parks / amenties - something with a low impact that can be vented & monitored for contaminants because the entire site is literally sitting over a layer of rubbish. They're not going to sell it to some asshole who'll immediately attempt to dig it all up.
Re: foregone conclusion (Score:2)
I imagine this will be the case. They wouldn't simply be selling him a landfill. They need to start a new one to take over. That can't be a fast or cheap prospect.
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Full or not, the point is all that crap stays buried, so they're not going to sell it to somebody who wants to dig it all up. Under any circumstances.
Then he'll need a permit (Score:3)
Then he'll need a permit from the local council to start digging.
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And an environmental permit from state. And they'd have to register as a major hazard facility with the HSE including preparing a very thorough plan of how they intend to manage the facility.
This guy has little clue.
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If it's an old landfill, the ground water protection system is likely very outdated. A permit to dig it up might involve fixing that, and the lost bitcoin probably isn't enough money to pay for that.
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It would be fun sitting on the side watching the proceedings.
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I'll bet he would like to but he doesn't have the money. Probably will need to get speculative investors to help him to buy the landfill too for a potential share in the profits. I wonder how much % he'd offer? I would think it would have to be rather high because the chance of not recovering the harddrive in a usable state are very high.
Computer expert :o (Score:3)
Re:Computer expert :o (Score:5, Insightful)
A computer “expert” who can't keep backups :o
Many IT professionals can't keep working backups.
Re: Computer expert :o (Score:2)
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A computer “expert” who can't keep backups :o
Many IT professionals can't keep working backups.
So you are saying the stereotype of them not taking care of their image is true?
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FWIW, 20 years ago I couldn't keep tested backups. Tape drives were too expensive, and the only things usable were CDs. But one CD wouldn't hold a complete backup, and files would end up getting split. Ugh! I was really glad I never had to try to use those things.
These days I can use an external usb drive, and do. An those get tested, because it's feasible.
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Been there done that... Site backups to tape, done religiously. On the same tape every day, because switching tapes took time. With confirmation turned off because it took too long. For years.
They were worn blank, of course.
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When I started doing backups at one job they were proud of having a year of backups off-site. The first time tapes rotated out of storage I tested one to make sure I understood the restore process. I understood the restore correctly, but Backup Exec had been reporting an almost-full tape, and then verified the backup for a year. Then formatting the tape. They had a year of empty tapes.
The story that just keeps giving (Score:1)
I reaaaaaaallly hope this guy is eventually allowed to spend a zillion more dollars digging and etc and either the drive isn't there at all or better would be the drive is found but completely trashed.
Would serve crypto bro right and be a lesson to the rest.
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I reaaaaaaallly hope this guy is eventually allowed to spend a zillion more dollars digging and etc and either the drive isn't there at all or better would be the drive is found but completely trashed.
This is going to turn out in one of two ways:
- finds the hard drive, but it's unusable
- never finds the hard drive
In both cases, quietly "gives up" so as to not bring attention to himself, from people ready to say "We told you so!"
* yeah, there's the third option: he finds the HD and it works. Please calculate the odds of that before considering it a realistic option.
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What percentage chance do you think he'll find it and its usable? I don't know enough about harddrives to say myself.
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You know that number for the Russian fine to Google? [slashdot.org] The inverse of that.
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Low enough that I wouldn't go looking for it if offered the entire contents.
The cost of moving years of waste (to a new tip with trucks I suppose?) and then when honing in on a likely area (based on dates and maybe addresses of mail) hiring a team of archeologists to go through everything with a fine toothed comb until satisfied you've gone through the relevant area and can bulk remove again somewhere else. Seems incredibly error prone.
The cost of that will scale with the likelihood of finding the correct h
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I wonder if he;s banking on the plastic bag was being unbroken and the hard drive staying dry all this time. Odds of that seem slim to me though.
You do have to wonder if he got some of those un-serious backers who invest in the dumbest shitcoins to give him money to look for the drive, he could actually get rich from this whole thing in some shady way, without ever finding the hard drive.
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That's what I'm feeling.
A grift that involves creating a company that looks for it and goes bankrupt.
Surely a bunch of people could be convinced there's a 10% chance of retrieving a USA le drive that has the wallet, and probably that it could be undertaken for under a million dollars.
But on the face of it it seems absurd. Honestly, I'm not convinced the wallet would exist on the drive even if it was found working. He says he thought he copied everything off of it before trashing it. Why should I expect he f
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Pretty sure trying to cash out $740M of bitcoin would tank the value.
That's more bitcoin than the entire El Salvador "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve"
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Would serve crypto bro right and be a lesson to the rest.
Coins sometimes ending up in the trash was literally part of BTC's deflationary design from the start. Ethereum's developers even took the concept one step further by intentionally "burning" coins as part of certain transactional processes (such as transaction fees and minting NFTs).
You're never going to convince the crypto faithful that deflationary pressure from lost coins is a bad thing, until it's their coins that go *poof* so someone else can reap the rewards.
Re: The story that just keeps giving (Score:2)
If the harddrive isn't encrypted and the land is for sale seems like they don't need him. He might still be the loser in this scenario.
History channel is calling (Score:5, Funny)
Needle In A Haystack? (Score:1)
Nah, it's just a hard drive in a landfill!
fools gold (Score:2)
This is a fiasco in the making. Oak Island.
My prediction (Score:2, Funny)
Who is Fronting Him This Money? (Score:3)
The loan to buy and then subsequently strip mine the landfill would be astronomical!
Who is loaning him this money? Knowing full well that if the Bitcoin aren't recovered, then this guy has no chance to pay for this whole endeavor.
He'll probably have to declare bankruptcy.
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The loan to buy and then subsequently strip mine the landfill would be astronomical!
Who is loaning him this money? Knowing full well that if the Bitcoin aren't recovered, then this guy has no chance to pay for this whole endeavor.
He'll probably have to declare bankruptcy.
I'm curious about the same thing. Whoever is fronting him the money to continue down this lane of lunacy is crypto-brainwashed into believing in the sure thing, even when it's abundantly obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ that that drive is not going to be readable even if it is found, and the chances of finding it are abysmally low. This is literally "so obsessed with money they'll throw away actual fortunes on the hope of finding a better fortune."
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Apparently, he has found some backers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
A few liberties in the reporting (Score:3)
This part of the story: "he accidentally put the hard drive containing his bitcoin wallet in a black bag during an office sort-out and left it in the hall of his house. His then partner is said to have mistaken the bag for rubbish and taken it with her on a trip to the dump, where it has been lost."
That is different from previous new reports: [bbc.com] "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" [said Howells] Also his former partner remembers the situation differently [wikipedia.org]"According to reports, Hafina Eddy-Evans, Howells's partner at the time, took the trash with the hard drive to the tip (landfill). According to Eddy-Evans, Howells 'begged' her to take the unwanted items to the tip."
My reading of it was he thought he had taken everything off the hard drive and wanted to throw it away. So he put in in a black trash bag and asked his partner to take the trash bag to the landfill. So it was not a mistake on her part as much all on his part. It was only later that he realized he did not copy the Bitcoin wallet onto any other disk.
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Haha
He messed up 3 times. Once for failing to backup his bitcoin wallet, once for failing to copy it over, once for then throwing it away... I get it, I do the same kind of thing sometimes, but ouch.
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Or that the wallet was perhaps lost already.
He thought he copied everything off it. Now he thinks he left the wallet behind.
It seems to me it's quite possible he copied everything off it and the wallet was already not there for whatever reason.
Re: A few liberties in the reporting (Score:2)
Once and for all... (Score:2, Informative)
Once and for all...
He is *not* going to be digging up the tip.
He will not get the permit he would from the environment agency, a national body. They will not grant him a permit for this purpose *under any circumstances*.
It *does not matter* what assurances he might give or how much money he has backing him.
The local council, *even if they sold him the tip* does not have the legal power to allow him to dig.
It would require something like an act of parliament, at Westminster, passed by both houses, to give th
Nope. (Score:3)
I guarantee you this guy would cause an environmental issue with an improper dig, and as soon as there was a sign of trouble he'd be in the wind.
It's most likely all a scam to get investors to give him money for the hope of high returns that will never actually happen.
Like a gambler chasing their losses as this point (Score:2)
He needs some friends to just give him an intervention at this point. Slim odds of it both being found and being recoverable. Just throwing money at it and/or raking up debt that he'll never be able to repay if he goes down this route is not the way to go - and only someone he really trusts has a chance at getting that message to him at this point.
This is like a Twilight Zone episode (Score:2)
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Final shot of this movie ends with old man still crawling around in the garbage as the sun sets.
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Final shot of this movie ends with old man still crawling around in the garbage as the sun sets.
Turns out that not everybody else in the world
was dead. He confused a local disaster with a
global one. But after a couple years of being
alone, digging in the giant trash pile, he has
gone fairly insane. When the area is declared
to be safe, teams enter the area and find him.
They take him back to civilization, in fact, to a
mental institution in a large city. Eventually he
escaoes Arkham, even though he now thinks
he is some kind of Penguin. His quest for lost
Bitcoin even finds him living in sewers at one point.
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Final shot of this movie ends with old man still crawling around in the garbage as the sun sets.
Turns out that not everybody else in the world
was dead. He confused a local disaster with a
global one. But after a couple years of being
alone, digging in the giant trash pile, he has
gone fairly insane. When the area is declared
to be safe, teams enter the area and find him.
They take him back to civilization, in fact, to a
mental institution in a large city. Eventually he
escapes Arkham, even though he now thinks
he is some kind of Penguin. His quest for lost
Bitcoin even finds him living in sewers at one point.
While running for mayor, he releases his own meme coin,
featuring an umbrella as the logo.
serves him right (Score:2)
Just imagine (Score:2)
Imagine being such an empty vessel that this is all you can think of doing with your life. On the other hand, it's not as stupid as climbing mt Everest on the tourist plan.
EMP the site (Score:2)
Time to put an end to this guy's stupid quest and EMP the site quite thoroughly.
Captain Ahab (Score:3)
Can't stop pursuing his Moby Dick.
I would like to buy the landfill... (Score:2)
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The Environment Agency *will never* grant a permit for digging up the tip to him under *any circumstances *even if he owns it* and attempts to put up bonds. There is no legal provision for that. There *will* be no digging. It's total fantasist stuff.
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Slowest of slow news days, guys?
No, it's simply what you're expected to do when owned by a crypto platform. [slashdot.org]
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It's really a lot like watching shows about hoarders. Viewers don't actually *care* but they also can't take their eyes off the pathetic spactacle.
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What would people say the odds are the drive can even be read at this point?
Slim but possible in my opinion.
Sitting outside in English weather for years... I'm assuming some old platter drive, it seems like by now the case would be rusted through and if the elements got to the platters it has to be toast, right?
It has been buried for years so that may or may not help the chances. Many landfills are sealed to prevent water and air from penetrating, but that does not mean it is not subject to internal moisture. The one factor is that neither he or the landfill can guarantee is if it was buried. Having iron in it, it might have been removed and disposed/recycled separately as metal scrap.
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Having iron in it, it might have been removed and disposed/recycled separately as metal scrap.
Which they would "pull out" of the rest of the garbage not by hand, but by using powerful magnets. What's the chances of any data being left after than (assuming the drive would still be intact and not already recycled for some reason).
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Hard drives have vent holes, so you don't need to wait for the case to rust through before the platters inside rust.
Based on the time I doubt it's a helium filled drive.
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Sitting outside in English weather for years...
Strictly speaking, Welsh weather. England is a ten mile drive away.
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The calculation is: an extremely tiny chance that he recovers the drive and gets super rich and plenty of new tax money enters the coffers, versus an extremely high chance that he finds nothing and leaves behind a dangerous site that has to be cleaned up at tax payer expense.
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Doesn't matter - there will be no winners. What does the UK get out of this other than a hazardous site that they have to clean up?
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The investors aren't going to continue dumping money to clean up the mess after they find out the hard drive either can't be found or has turned into a pile of rust.
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The case was never sealed.
Go look at an old hard drive that's not helium filled. There will be a vent hole, with a message next to it saying do not cover.
There's a filter behind it, but water isn't going to be stopped by a dust filter.
The hole is required to equalise the pressure when it heats up.
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Exactly.
Why do I have a feeling if they don't find the drive, or they do find all the hard drives in there and find that they are unusable and there is no pot of gold under that rainbow that whatever legal entity executes the purchase would suddenly declare bankruptcy and dissolve, leaving the taxpayers with the mess.
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Why would it be taxpayers? It'd be the investors that backed the purchase that have the mess. The site itself would be sold as part of the liquidation, probably to the original solar project that will probably still expect to have it sold to them eventually.
Taxpayers would probably be better off if there's a bidding war between the solar company and the cryptonutters. It's, after all, just a worthless landfill site.
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If the legal entity has declared bankruptcy, then you cant go after the investors - its the legal entities responsibility.
And if the landfill is that entities only "asset", then theres fuck all to sell.
The entire point is that after all the searching is done and dusted, theres still the issue of compacting, sealing and capping the site to the UKs Environment Agencies standards (and other bodies potentially as well). Investors aren't going to fund that if theres nothing to recoup the money from, and its ext
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The corporate veil can be pierced in the cases of fraud, wrongdoing, or injustice. I imagine the sale contract could be written in such a way that funds for cleanup/capping had to be reserved, and violation of that term would be considered wrongdoing.
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It depends on what the "legal entity" is, but probably yes.
There are other ways to deal with that though. The land owner can require a surety or bond.