James Howell's Bitcoin
James Howell’s Bitcoin
You can read the Businessinsider.com news article HERE….
Newport, a seaside city in Wales, is famous for its docks and industrial heritage — and for allegedly having half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin buried in its local landfill.
Former IT worker James Howell mined the cryptocurrency back in 2013, well before its value skyrocketed. In a mix-up, he accidentally threw away the hard drive its access key was stored on.
"I found a blank 20GB hard drive in my drawer instead of thousands of Bitcoin," Howell told CBS News.
Since then, he's been lobbying the local government to allow him to excavate tons of trash in the landfill as part of an attempt to find it. But local officials are refusing to let him.
"There are companies out there that dig at the bottom of the ocean for treasure. Digging a landfill is a damn sight bit easier than digging at the bottom of the ocean," said Howell.
He said he's contacted experts from around the world as part of his attempt to recover his huge Bitcoin fortune. Despite offering Newport City Council a cut of the coins if he were to find them, it continues to refuse the proposal citing environmental damage it could cause and that the council's "duty is to provide services to our residents" — something it said Howell's plan would get in the way of.
Still, Howell is determined to keep trying to find the hard drive.
"I'm not gonna to give up on it, because it's you know, like I said, it's a lost lottery ticket," he said. " A lottery ticket would disintegrate but a hard drive doesn't. It's not going anywhere."
CNN —
A British man who accidentally threw a hard drive loaded with bitcoin into the trash has offered the local authority where he lives more than $70 million if it allows him to excavate a landfill site.
IT worker James Howells got rid of the drive, which held a digital store of 7,500 bitcoins, between June and August in 2013. He had originally mined the virtual currency four years earlier when it was of little value.
But when the cryptocurrency shot up in value and he went in search of it, he discovered that he had mistakenly thrown the hard drive out with the trash.
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Now, with his lost bitcoin having soared even further, Howells has approached Newport City Council in Wales to ask for permission to dig a specific section of the landfill site where he believes the hard drive ended up.
In return, he has offered to pay the council a quarter of the current value of the hoard, which he says could be distributed to local residents.
The digital currency was created in 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoins are essentially computer files that are stored in a “digital wallet” on your device. They can then be used as payment, with every transaction being recorded in a public list known as blockchain.
The price of bitcoin hit an all-time high in recent days and is now trading around $37,000.
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Howells first discovered that the hard drive was missing when his bitcoin was worth around $9 million. Based on the current rates, he estimates it would be worth around $273 million.
He told CNN: “I offered to donate 25% or £52.5 million ($71.7 million) to the city of Newport in order to distribute to all local residents who live in Newport should I find and recover the bitcoins.”
“This would work out to approx £175 ($239) per person for the entire city (316k population). Unfortunately they refused the offer and won’t even have a face to face discussion with me on the matter.”
After discovering the mistake, Howells went to the garbage dump to see where the hard drive might have ended up. He told CNN at the time: “As soon as I saw the site, I thought you’ve got no chance. The area covered is huge.”
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However, he now believes he knows how to retrieve it.
“The plan would be to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a grid reference system and recover the hard drive whilst adhering to all safety and environmental standards,” he told CNN Friday. “The drive would then be presented to data recovery specialists who can rebuild the drive from scratch with new parts and attempt to recover the tiny piece of data that I need in order to access the bitcoins.”
“The value of the hard drive is over £200m (around $273 million) and I’m happy to share a portion of that with the people of Newport should I be given the opportunity to search for it. Approximately 50% would be for investors who put up the capital to fund the project, and I would be left with the remaining 25%,” he added.
A spokeswoman for Newport City Council told CNN that the local government authority had been “contacted a number of times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to contain bitcoins.”
In a statement sent to CNN, the spokeswoman said the council had not refused the offer – but rather, was not permitted to excavate the site.
She said: “The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds – without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order.”
The Point of the Story:
This story is similar to the Roper sapphire story, in that it has to do with a precious and magnificent treasure. But in this case, Howell knew the treasure he had, but could not find it, or get to it. What a shame!
The Point of this web-book:
We’d like to help Christians be able to find the promises which God has made to them in His word. This involves properly understanding those promises, both conditional and unconditional, and discerning which ones apply to them/us today. Then it is a matter of stepping out in faith on those promises.
“And we desire that each one of you demonstrate the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and endurance inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:11-12) Notice the two elements necessary to experience the promises: faith and endurance (or patience).
This is the reason we offer an interface for you to be able to find promises that fit your situation. Please feel free to search by topic, or Bible reference, or category. Mr. Howell surely wishes he had such a tool to find his Bitcoin!
Happy searching!
And now, on the the all-important topic of the source of God’s promises and how to rightly understand them….