Bitcoin Worth $1.5 Billion Lost in Landfill

Newport, Wales - A computer expert faces an almost impossible task of recovering a hard drive containing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin after accidentally throwing it away in the trash.

Bitcoin fortune in the trash

James Howells, 38, accidentally threw the hard drive into the trash ten years ago while cleaning his house. He had temporarily stored the drive inside a black garbage bag.

The drive contained the private keys to his Bitcoin wallet, which holds 8,000 Bitcoins that were mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency.

When he woke up the next day, his partner had already put the garbage bags in his car and taken them to the landfill, thinking he was doing him a favor.

Searching for a needle in a haystack

The amount of waste buried in the landfill is estimated at 100,000 tons, making the search for the small drive akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Howells offered Newport City Council, which runs the landfill, a large sum of money to allow him to search for the drive, but his request was denied due to strict environmental regulations.

Rising Bitcoin value increases the value of the lost treasure

With the value of Bitcoin having skyrocketed in recent times, the value of the lost drive has also increased significantly. If Howells had kept the coins, he would have been extremely wealthy, worth around \$451 million, putting him in the same league as billionaires like George Clooney and Sting.

Is there any hope of recovering the treasure?

Some waste workers at the site believe that James should be given a chance to search for the drive, while others believe that the operation is impossible.

The fate of the lost digital treasure remains uncertain. Will James succeed in recovering his lost fortune, or will it remain buried forever in a landfill in South Wales?