News Man who lost $780 million in Bitcoin in a landfill now wants to buy the entire dump before city closes the site

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How would they safely excavate and not destroy the drive?

Generally heavy equipment drives on top of the landfill, no guarantee the drive wasn't crushed in the garbage truck, by a bull dozer, etc.

The better question is who is going to monitor the site after they start tearing it apart. Landfills aren't as simple as they appear on the surface and putting it back together to be safe is going to cost millions on its own.
 
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Here's a question - I've never mined Bitcoin and never will, so I genuinely don't know... is it data that can be backed up on multiple drives like anything else, or no? I can't imagine trusting millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the integrity of a single hard drive of any design.
 
gg83 said:
What if the drive never made it to the landfill in the first place???
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I've had that thought burning in the back of my mind as well. He's going by the word of his girlfriend that she followed his request to take it to the dump.

Even if she followed his request to get rid of the bag out of the house during the move she could have inadvertently did a half job and threw in in the back seat of her car.

Forgot about it for a few months, the drive could have slipped under her seat and she 100% forgot about it. There could be some lucky dude in the future cleaning out a clunker used car and Gold.

Hey it could have happen this way.:rofl:
 
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stonecarver said:
I've had that thought burning in the back of my mind as well. He's going by the word of his girlfriend that she followed his request to take it to the dump.

Even if she followed his request to get rid of the bag out of the house during the move she could have inadvertently did a half job and threw in in the back seat of her car.

Forgot about it for a few months, the drive could have slipped under her seat and she 100% forgot about it. There could be some lucky dude in the future cleaning out a clunker used card and Gold.

Hey it could have happen this way.:rofl:
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Imagine finding an hdd under the seat of a used car with 8,000 bitcoin
 
Jabberwocky79 said:
Here's a question - I've never mined Bitcoin and never will, so I genuinely don't know... is it data that can be backed up on multiple drives like anything else, or no? I can't imagine trusting millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the integrity of a single hard drive of any design.
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Yes, you can copy the 256 bit private key (what is ultimately required to access your bitcoin) whenever/wherever you want. Obviously the more places the key exists the more chances there are for it to fall into the wrong hands, but that should be mitigated by encrypting the key with a strong pass word/phrase.
 
I read a few years ago that everything in a trash dump ends up being quickly "fossilized" after more trash gets dumped over. They said that nothing gets decomposed there, it's just getting kind of sealed in a big and dense block of trash. Maybe this process helped preserving the drive (if it's really there)? But good luck extracting it from this state of matter. At this point, it's literally a mining operation.
 
Howells expressed his surprise at the imminent landfill closure plans. "If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site 'as is,'" said the lost BTC HDD's original owner, optimistically. He said he had already spoken to his investment partners about a buyout: "It is something that is very much on the table."
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A buyout today would also save the council the expense of capping the site, where multiple layers of aggregates, barriers, and pipework are used to cover the enormous plot of waste safely.
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While a buyout would in theory save the council the expense of capping the site, the issue I see if I were on the council is the risk that they don't quickly find the drive and the Bitcoin, they expand the search and disturb the site more than expected based on a hunch that they're close... then eventually they run out of money with the site still uncapped. In that scenario, I assume the council would end up footing the (now higher) bill for capping anyway, since it can't be safely left uncapped and his investment partners are unlikely to kick in money at that point.

Maybe they could demand a very, very large bond as a condition of the sale, to be returned upon completion of an inspection confirming the site is fully capped to all applicable environmental standards?
 
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Jabberwocky79 said:
Here's a question - I've never mined Bitcoin and never will, so I genuinely don't know... is it data that can be backed up on multiple drives like anything else, or no? I can't imagine trusting millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the integrity of a single hard drive of any design.
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When he lost it it was probably $10 and he was probably under 20
 
The council must be thrilled. How often do investors offer millions to buy a landfill?

This is a fun story. Of course he needs to find the drive for the optimal ending...
 
This is the first time anyone has proposed to do real mining for coins

For some reason I had to reword this about seven times to get past the sites filter despite saying nothing controversial or critical.
 
gg83 said:
The drive is probably toast at this point. Water, oil, methane, bacteria, fungus, and pill bugs, for good measure, probably are eating the platers. What if the drive never made it to the landfill in the first place???
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depends. if it's a mechanical drive it's probably still recoverable. those are vacuum sealed, and unless it was physically damaged the platters should still hold the data safe (assuming the vacuum seal holds), even if the rest of the drive is inoperable.

if it's on an SSD, you're probably correct it's probably damaged beyond recovery
 
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Justin Goldberg said:
Since your fiat and gold is worthless and was created with zero energy, go ahead and give me yours.
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Except the car has actual value, unlike bitcoin, which are a scam. Sad people are actually falling for a nonsense hoax like these.

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As others said, there are huge environmental concerns with some moron buying and digging up a landfill for some imaginary currency. If it wasn't the case, I would gladly watch him try and waste all his money for nothing. He clearly has much more money than brains, and that money would be better used otherwise anyways.
 
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Jabberwocky79 said:
Here's a question - I've never mined Bitcoin and never will, so I genuinely don't know... is it data that can be backed up on multiple drives like anything else, or no? I can't imagine trusting millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the integrity of a single hard drive of any design.
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When he bought the bitcoin long time ago, it wasn't worth much. Sometime later, when the HDD got thrown out, the price went up considerably to ~120 k. Now it's worth close to a billion. I'm sure if his original purchase was worth back then what it is worth today, he would have had a million back-ups.

He could have also printed out the keys.

Like the saying goes: There are those who back up, and those who will back up.
 
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jg.millirem said:
What a sad life this guy has, a slave to lost bits whose value was created with extreme energy waste to begin with.
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And he simply cannot move on. He is letting this destroy his life. Additional question: Who throws out someone else's drive without so much as a mention? I'm guessing they are no longer together.
 
RedBaron616 said:
And he simply cannot move on. He is letting this destroy his life. Additional question: Who throws out someone else's drive without so much as a mention? I'm guessing they are no longer together.
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He asked her to do it. There are several articles on this moron here on the site already, at least one states he explicitly told her to dispose of the bag. So, entirely his own fault, please leave her out of it.
 
21,000,000 maximum bitcoins, 8000 of them have been permanently removed from the system in this one single event. I lost 0.000x bitcoins when my wallet became unrecoverable. I bet many people have lost wallets.

.00038 or .038% of the entire supply of bitcoins in a singular incident that will never be usable. Again, explain to me how this is something that can be sustaining? It never will be. This thing is destined for disaster.
 
A Stoner said:
21,000,000 maximum bitcoins, 8000 of them have been permanently removed from the system in this one single event. I lost 0.000x bitcoins when my wallet became unrecoverable. I bet many people have lost wallets.

.00038 or .038% of the entire supply of bitcoins in a singular incident that will never be usable. Again, explain to me how this is something that can be sustaining? It never will be. This thing is destined for disaster.
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Quantum computers will crack the encryption in a few years then they'll be usable again.
 
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