10mo ago

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

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

Buried Bitcoins would be worth over $780 million today if recoverable.

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www.tomshardware.com /tech-industry/cryptocurrency/landfill-concealing-8-000-bitcoins-valued-at-usd780m-to-transform-into-a-solar-farm-but-man-now-wishes-to-buy-the-site

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Man who lost $780M in Bitcoin in a landfill now wants to buy the dump

www.tomshardware.com /tech-industry/cryptocurrency/landfill-concealing-8-000-bitcoins-valued-at-usd780m-to-transform-into-a-solar-farm-but-man-now-wishes-to-buy-the-site

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

www.tomshardware.com /tech-industry/cryptocurrency/landfill-concealing-8-000-bitcoins-valued-at-usd780m-to-transform-into-a-solar-farm-but-man-now-wishes-to-buy-the-site

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76 comments

This saga has been a ride so far. There is no way this guy is mentally stable at this point, he is going to do anything and spend every dime he has until he's either found it or he brushes his teeth with a .38.
- It became his Moby Dick.
  
  It all ends with him finding it, wedged under a broken glass pitcher. He cuts himself badly and because he owns the whole landfill, and is nuts, his phone is dead and he bleeds out before he can get help.
- I mean, if you notice that you had and lost 700 millions you have to have a really strong mind to not go crazy. If it was me I think I would go crazy.
  
  It's a far cry from this guy's situation, but I think I had five or six bitcoin back when I was mining in the early days. I cashed out when they were maybe $40-50 each towards a new GPU.
  Sure, I could go nuts thinking about what I would do with the money now, but if I hadn't sold at that rate, I probably would have sold at $100, or $200, or...
  There's no way in hell I would have had the discipline to "hodl" to this point, so I just get on with my life.
  
  He lost the coins in 2013 or before. The price was then $15 or even lower...
  If he just bought 100 BTC for only $1.5k in 2013, he'd now have 10 million dollars....
  
  exists
- It will become the modern day oak island

What are the chances the hard drive would still be readable, I wonder?
And keep backups, folks.
- the only reason I'm not this guy is that my hard drive was landfill long before it arrived at the dump and was exposed to the elements for over a decade.
  also my wallet was encrypted and there is no way in fuck I'm remembering the longest password I ever used.
  I mined on CPU so what I lost was then pennies that currently amount to hundreds of billions so if there was even the smallest chance it could be recovered I'd be in this headline.
  
  Also a cpu miner and it was in the hundredths of a cent per coin when I did it. It sucks but that drive is long gone and not worth it to fret over. It was also in the hundreds of millions at todays cost
- You'd be surprised what's recoverable, especially if it's an HDD.
  There was a recovery service I could send customer drives to that could recover a drive in a fire, flood, buried, shattered etc. The question was, how much did you want to pay for the service. One quote came back over 75k.
- It depends how it was stored. If it is just raw dogging the garbage pile? The odds get very low but, theoretically, it is just a matter of very carefully the drive before booting it up. Think "data forensics"
  If it was stored in a plastic bag or box? Then it is about as safe as a drive in your closet that you haven't spun up in over a decade.
  
  It gets compacted in the garbage truck and compacted some more at the landfill. I think the odds are slim it could be found in one piece
  
  it is just a matter of very carefully the drive before booting it up
  I'm curious about what the missing word is. Cleaning? Inspecting?
- I would be shocked if it was still readable. He probably had a shot very early on, but now? Seems hopeless.
  
  a surprising ammount data can be gotten off surprisingly damaged drives, there is always the possibility, thats why it took a delte/write/delete/write process, a rare earth magnet, 3 guys, a sledge hammer, and a industrial shredder to throw away a hard drive in the army.

Sad story.
That's enough money to have a good life and provide a good life to your loved ones. If he never finds it, he is a crazy man. If he finds it he is a smart man. A normal person can't earn that much in a lifetime. Even a miniscule chance of finding it could drive someone to obsession.
For the sake of his sanity, and for a good story, I hope he finds it, but I doubt he will.
- With his monkey paw luck, he'd find it just as Bitcoin crashes and loses nearly all value somehow
- It's spent like a decade in a rainy landfill in Wales.
  Even if he finds it, it's fucked.
  
  Landfill design is really interesting, and hard drives are very well sealed and aluminum. It would be sitting in a fairly well drained spot, if the seal was not perforated during compaction there's a good chance the platters are readable.
- Check out Rai stones.
  Although the ownership of a particular stone might change, the stone itself is rarely moved due to its weight and risk of damage. Thus the physical location of a stone was often not significant: ownership was established by shared agreement and could be transferred even without physical access to the stone. Each large stone had an oral history that included the names of previous owners.
  In one instance, a large rai being transported by canoe and outrigger was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as any other stone.
  
  My dad lives on Yap for a few years as a kid. My grandparents had a 2' diameter rai stone until they died. It's with my aunt now.
- Enough money? It's three quarters of a billion... That's an unreasonably large amount.

This is just a modern iteration of the book HOLES, and it takes place in a landfill instead of a dry lakebed.
- I never read or watched Holes, is it any good?
  
  Actually, yeah, it's pretty fun for what it is. 78% Rotten Tomatoes/76% User Score, for reference. 7.0 on imdb.
  
  I never saw it but read it. Yes, 10/10, highly recommend.
  
  The book and movie are both pretty good I think

What are the odds that even if he finds that thumb drive that it even still works? LOL buy it dumbass, let us all know how that works out for you.
- Was it a thumb drive? I thought it was a hard drive. Might even still be attached to the motherboard in a desktop.
  
  If it's a traditional hard drive with moving parts the chances of it still working are zero. Data recovery maybe possible if the platters are still somewhat intact but I doubt he'd even find it to begin with.

A gold-digger
- He ain't messin with no
  
  Can Elmo say the word if Elmo is singing his favorite song?

Actual Bitcoin mining is a lot like sifting through a trash heap
- Thats a really harsh description for crypto-bros.

That thumbnail though, lmao.

this guy is a character in red dead redemption
- Everything Is Coming Together. Exactly As I Planned.

He lost the coins in 2013 or before. The price was then $15 or even lower...
If he just bought 100 BTC for only $1.5k in 2013, he'd now have 10 million dollars....
- If my math is right then he would have had to have $117k in bitcoin at that time to have $780m now. That is a lot of money to lose even back then.
- It's a needle in a haystack, but that's a really valuable needle. It might actually be worth it.
- Yeah.
  I mean I didn't buy $15 in bitcoin 15 years ago (have never bought any, never will), and I'm not obsessed about it.
  Is it really any different for this guy?

Humanity’s greatest modern tragedy plays out in a Welsh trash heap. A decade-old hard drive—now worth $780 million—rots beneath layers of bureaucratic concrete and renewable virtue signaling. The council’s solar farm isn’t green energy—it’s a middle finger to crypto’s original sin, converting mined regret into panel wattage.
Howells’ desperation transcends greed. This is archeology for the apocalypse, sifting through diapers and coffee grounds to resurrect a digital pharaoh’s tomb. Offering $13 million to desecrate a landfill? Peak late-stage capitalism: valuing hypothetical ones and zeros over actual waste management.
The legal system’s verdict? “Lol, no.” Property rights dissolve when you’re up against municipal PR stunts. That hard drive’s entropy now fuels more than just regret—it powers garbage trucks.
- greatest is quite a stretch
  
  Oh, you’re right—forgot the /s. Clearly, a $780 million treasure buried under bureaucratic arrogance and greenwashing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a comedy! Who doesn’t love watching late-stage capitalism turn potential fortune into landfill fuel? Peak entertainment.

I mean, if he also wants to take on the costs of doing all the remediation work and ongoing maintenance and surveillance for the rest of time that's probably a good deal for the city

Old memes, hot nudes and millions in bitcoin, Har D. Drive achieved all of it. "My treasures? You can have yhem if you'll find them. Come find them in the abandoned privatized landfill!"
- I'm Cap'n Raw D. Awg and imma be caPn oh the piRarates!!!
- Now you have my attention. This dude could get lots of people to search for free in the promise they’d get some scraps. I know two homeless dudes on the corner that would do this
- I have 3 dd dumps hanging out on my array waiting for a rainy day

What if this hard-drive is actually not within this landfill ;P
- What if it is and it became unrecoverable ages ago?
  
  it would be kinda funny that he actually found his drive again. But the data is indeed fully gone.

I hate this timeline.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

What ever happened to the dude who had millions of coins stored on a password protected drive that he forgot the password to and was on his last attempt to unlock it?
- I think he hired someone who found an exploit that then allowed a brute force technique at it actually got unlocked . The person hired got a percentage of the money.
  
  Yes, but no.

That guy's a nut. All that effort would be better spent doing something useful with the money he keeps blowing.
- He'll find it just before the end of his life, having ultimately spent $780,000,000.01 to succeed.

76 comments