The Man Who Threw Away A Disc Worth 184 Million Euros 9 Years Ago Is Ready To Dig Up A Landfill To Find It

Welshman James Howells claims that in 2013, he accidentally threw out a hard drive with bitcoins, that are currently valued at 184 million euros, writes the Independent.

Now he has come out with the announcement that he has managed to raise enough funds to dig up the landfill in Newport. He wants to find the lost disk.

“Funding is secured,” Howells said. The 37-year-old IT worker claims he started mining bitcoins in 2009, when they were created. He was able to get thousands of them. "In mid-2013, when the disc was worth several hundred thousand euros, I accidentally threw it in the trash," Howell said.

He later decided to contact Newport City Council. He offered to share the money, if they helped him find the disk. However, the office canceled his search. They argued, that they were worried about the environment. Another argument was that the whole project would cost millions and there was no guarantee that the drive would be recoverable or that it would still work.

Howell promised that if the authority allowed him to dig up the landfill, he would build a solar power plant over it. If he managed to find the disk and recover the data, he would not keep the money, writes Fortune.

According to the agreement, he and his partners would keep 30% of the amount, or about 50 million euros. The searchers would also get a share, and the citizens of Newport would also be receiving a sum. There are 150,000 of them in the city, and Howell would give each one $50.

Howells reportedly assembled a team of eight experts. They are supposed to specialize in areas such as waste management, data extraction and landfill excavation. He also sought expertise from a consultant who worked for a company that recovered data from the black box of the crashed space shuttle Columbia.