News High court ruling ends man's hopes of recovering $750M bitcoin hard drive from a Welsh landfill — hard drive storing 8,000 bitcoins was lost over 1...

[Admin]

The legal arguments over $750M worth of Bitcoin buried in Welsh dump have come to an unhappy end for the man who lost his crypto HDD in the trash 12 years ago.

High court ruling ends man's hopes of recovering $750M bitcoin hard drive from a Welsh landfill — hard drive storing 8,000 bitcoins was lost over 1... : Read more

 

[TheyStoppedit]

He's just being an idiot. There's a 0.00% chance that they would ever find it. If they spend millions searching and don't find it, who's going to pay that bill? It was a ridiculous idea from the get-go. I don't know what possessed him to think there was any shred of chance of finding it. Take the L and call it a lesson learned

 

[punkncat]

There was a lot of assumption on this guys part anyway in relation to the continued viability of that drive as a working or even recoverable unit. Slam a HDD around with a bunch of other trash, run over with a tractor, rain, cold...there is no telling if it was even in one piece and much less that long a time afterward. Guy was grasping for straws.

Just a tip that HDD with several hundred million pounds of value should probably be locked away somewhere safe......just saying.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

I don't think he's an idiot for hoping to retrieve the drive. But I do think he was an idiot for throwing it out to begin with. How does a person casually forget they went through the trouble of mining bitcoins that were worth over 500m at the time of doing it? AND forget where they're stored? C'mon

 

[USAFRet]

I don't think he's an idiot for hoping to retrieve the drive. But I do think he was an idiot for throwing it out to begin with. How does a person casually forget they went through the trouble of mining bitcoins that were worth over 500m at the time of doing it? AND forget where they're stored? C'mon

The drive was in a bag, that looked like trash.
His GF threw it out with the rest of the trash.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

The drive was in a bag, that looked like trash.
His GF threw it out with the rest of the trash.

I think you missed the part where he deliberately threw the hard drive into the trash and then asked his GF to take it to the dump.

 

[USAFRet]

I think you missed the part where he deliberately threw the hard drive into the trash and then asked his GF to take it to the dump.

mistakenly, not deliberately.

In any case, it's gone gone gone.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

What I meant is that he deliberately threw out the hard drive, he mistakenly threw out the wrong one and the bitcoins with it. Semantics aside, I don't blame him for trying every possible way to recover it. I just can't imagine a scenario where I have two hard drives laying there along with the knowledge that one of them contains 500m worth of property and not check it first, label it, set it aside,... something. I'm an idiot for plenty of other reasons myself, so if I end up in the news about one of them, this guy is welcome to call me an idiot as well... it's just an innocent remark about his predicament and based off of TheyStoppedIt's comment.

Gone, gone indeed

 

[Pierce2623]

I knew crypto typer were dumb or criminals but damn this guy is really dumb.

 

[zworykin]

I just can't imagine a scenario where I have two hard drives laying there along with the knowledge that one of them contains 500m worth of property and not check it first, label it, set it aside,... something.

He threw it away on August 4, 2013. 8,000 BTC in early August 2013 would have been worth about $80k.

 

[Sippincider]

run over with a tractor

And not just any tractor. I can't speak for the UK, but in the US it'd be one of these:

(image source)

Sorry for his loss, but the odds off finding the drive are near zero, and the odds of recovering any data are even less. Gone is gone.

 

[Jabberwocky79]

He threw it away on August 4, 2013. 8,000 BTC in early August 2013 would have been worth about $80k.

Ah, right. I guess it was over 500m when he actually sued the council. Still, 80k isn't chump change lol.

 

[stonecarver]

mistakenly, not deliberately.

In any case, it's gone gone gone.

If he would have been a forum member maybe just maybe he would have heard your message.

Keep three copies and one off site.

 

[rockerrb3]

what a moron!

 

[abufrejoval]

I just wish the rest of crypto would wind up in a dumpster, too.

I've never seen a worse case of misplaced trust after religion was invented.

 

[Pierce2623]

He threw it away on August 4, 2013. 8,000 BTC in early August 2013 would have been worth about $80k.

That’s still an $80,000 hard drive vs a $50 hard drive. I think I’d label the good one.

 

[bit_user]

Just a tip that HDD with several hundred million pounds of value should probably be locked away somewhere safe......just saying.

His girlfriend tossed it out more than a decade ago, when cleaning out an office and the value of Bitcoin was considerably less. At the time it happened, I think the value was only up to about $900k (Edit: others have mention $80k). Yeah, still not smart to trust it to a HDD lying around, but he got these by mining back in 2009 and then might've forgotten about them and the value crept up while he wasn't paying attention.

 

[bit_user]

That’s still an $80,000 hard drive vs a $50 hard drive. I think I’d label the good one.

You presume he even knew it was worth that. I'm pretty sure he didn't, or else he wouldn't have been so careless with it.

 

[bit_user]

The thing about this whole affair that gives me the feeling he's being a bit childish is that it's not like this was his retirement savings from a lifetime of hard work. This was essentially like a winning lottery ticket bought by someone who's not even a regular lottery player. Easy come, easy go.

The guy sounds like he has decent earning potential and can still afford a comfortable life & retirement. Okay, so he missed out on "the big one that got away". It's still good for a story.

Heck, I once had 20 bitcoins, but I got spooked and even back then it was an amount of money more than I wanted to lose if the market collapsed. So, I dumped them and made a small profit. Could've been worth $1.89M today, if I held on to them. Oh well. I know I made what were rational decisions at the time, so I don't blame myself.

 

[voyteck]

I don't think he's an idiot for hoping to retrieve the drive. But I do think he was an idiot for throwing it out to begin with. How does a person casually forget they went through the trouble of mining bitcoins that were worth over 500m at the time of doing it? AND forget where they're stored? C'mon

It can happen to everyone but the real idiocy here was throwing it out to a standard bin instead of disposing it in a special bin for electronic waste. Karma sucks. In my country it's not even allowed.

 

[USAFRet]

In my country it's not even allowed.

And I can guarantee, it happens every single day.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The poster child for never entrust your irreplaceable data to only a single copy.

 

[derekullo]

Just so I think I understand.
The actual things on his hard drive were the 256 bit keys that prove that he is the owner of however many transactions it took to get that much bitcoin?
And so if he acquired all that bitcoin in lets say 1000 transactions that would take 256000 bits / 32000 bytes / 32 kilobytes ?
Was all this over potentially 32 kilobytes of data?

 

[bit_user]

Was all this over potentially 32 kilobytes of data?

The definition of a key includes it being something that's compact and usually much lower cost than whatever it's protecting. This is true, no matter the technology, whether it's a mechanical lock or a cryptographic algorithm.

The point is that without it, he can't access the bitcoin. That's all that really matters.

 

[USAFRet]

Was all this over potentially 32 kilobytes of data?

The difference between an encryption key that protects a drive with the single text file of "Hello, kitty"
Or a drive with the fully realized plans for a working cold fusion reactor.

Same small size. Vastly different end result.