Topic: Owner of 8K bitcoin lost in landfill threatens to bankrupt local council - page 8. (Read 1705 times)

That man then has a double reason to be sorry for not remaining single in his life, because not only would he not have become a victim of his wife rummaging through drawers and throwing things in the trash, but he would also have more than those 8000 BTC if she hadn't objected to him because of computer noise

If nothing else, he will become an expert in waste disposal and its impact on the environment

If he manages to recover it for sure, it is already submerged in water, the soil is already inside, and rust takes place, which is impossible to recover no matter how much he pays to recover it. It is just funny, though, that it was his mistake, and now he is blaming others for not allowing him to check the landfill. For sure, he has been sleepless for a couple of months now, always thinking of it, which is just wasting his effort. It is better to move on right now and learn from those hard mistakes, we can't do anything now, and that bitcoin is already lost forever.

         -   8000 bitcoins—that's a lot of money. Just because I was cleaning the old office and spilled the hard drive. Why does the person who cleaned or fixed the office know nothing about Bitcoin? I just can't figure it out, or does the owner of the office not know that there is something hidden in a hard drive worth 8000 bitcoins?

It just makes me think: Did the person who put 8000 bitcoins in the hard drive that day know that the office would be cleaned? Obviously he didn't know, according to the article given, and maybe he only remembered when he put it on the hard drive in the office when it was finished cleaning. It's a terrible incident, and it's really sad. Wasn't the hard drive recovered from the trash?

Wow I am surprised he is still at it. I remember reading about this years ago and basically knew back then that it was gone forever.

When you throw away your garage, it’s not tracked where it’s dumped exactly. Maybe some site and some corner but exact location is never logged. So it’s impossible to know where it is especially when there is also other peoples garbage in that site and they pour new garbage over the old and seal it with a wrap and then more garage over that wrap.

And even if they found it, the data would be irrecoverable. Because due to the environmental chemicals it would be completely destroyed.

Every day with a different funny story, like, what the heck is the guy even thinking, suing Newport City Council (NCC), and what does he plan to achieve? Even if he succeeds with his plan to finally press a charge, will he win the chase, or does he think the local council will just admit defeat like that?

Don't he also look at it the other way round; That what if he take this case to court since he want to press charges, and the court finally grant him an order to stop the ongoing construction in the said location, and he is being permitted to search the area and make some digging as he have claim he can use that process to fine his lost hardrive, and at the end of the day he did not even see the cover or anything that will look like the hard drive, in their, if they even happen to see the hardrive on the process of the digging it might have been damaged through the machine that might be used that's if it will even be found, and after all this process, if the Newport City Council (NCC) decides to file a case on him and charge him for damages that might occur during his search do he think he can be able to escape such charges? 
 
Some people just need to run some rethinks over some things before they can take a certain decision and push it further. All I will say is that they just have some random bad legal adviser.

He trashed the wallet backup 10 years ago now threatening to sue the authority for following the orders that is what they are supposed to do.

It doesn't make Bitcoin bad, the person himself alone.

But many of the others pointed out it could be a made-up story and trying to get some money via such threats or coming to some kind of deal to not disrespect the other party here.

I think this guy was done looking for his long lost hard drive knowing that he had dumped it himself not someone else.

Don't know how this person can sue their local council on fault or negligence on their part but this seems quite lengthy and the owner doesn't want to just give up with this long effort, even if they keep digging up the whole dumpster location and sorting it out themselves what is it likely to find? In theory it doesn't make sense that it will be recovered again maybe the Hard Drive will be damaged and corroded in the other pile.

Does anyone know the address of the lost wallet? Although this is not important.

This guy doesn’t value Bitcoin before that’s why he throw it away. He is just making a fuss that his Bitcoin is important to him now that price is already high. It’s his own judgement by treating Bitcoin useless by the time he throw his hard drive.

I believe no one view this guy opinion seriously because we all know that he is the one to blame on his loss. He should backup his private key properly if he really give importance to his Bitcoin that time.

He suing the city council does not have any good or bad impact on the image of Bitcoin; instead, if those BTC are found, there will be more BTC in circulation. This man made the biggest mistake of his life, and now he is fighting for it. That's the best he can do right now, but one thing confuses me: if the owner of the HDD is offering 10% to the CC, then why is the CC not allowing him to do digging?

I think they must have become greedy and thought of digging by themselves. I do not know; I am just making an assumption. There could be any number of possibilities. But things seem not to be as straight as they are trying to make them.

Recovering data from HDDs depends on their health. If it still has something in it from which a data recovery expert could fetch something, then keep the amount in mind. I can bet they will make sure to get something out of it. One more thing: James must have some proof to show that those wallets belong to him. He must need the.dat file containing the key to access the funds. Let's hope he finds what he's looking for.

We do not know for sure whether those BTC exist or not, but I think James Howells has at least some hope to count on. I mean, why is the council not allowing him to dig the landfill? It seems doubtful, but let's just not jump to conclusions for now and wait to see what happens next. Now James Howells will sue them, asking for £446 million ($557 million). I mean, the chances of victory are lower, but still.

Maybe he will get some chance of digging up there. And what if he found his hard drive?Then, as you (the OP) asked, how could a data recovery expert recover something out of it? The point is, it's been a decade, and James is still hoping for it to be in healthy condition. I mean, if the device is not burned to ashes or melted, then I think there will be some chance of recovering the data from it.

At least giving it a try is better than sitting without hope.

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Looking at this statement shown above, which I got from the link OP provided, I must say it clearly shows that neither was James Bitcoin hardware wallet stolen or rather misplaced in the council's premises, for him to be asking for such a huge sum of money. But was accidentally thrown into the trash bin a whole 10yrs ago and, which somebody is to be blamed for that, as nobody knew that item will be worth millions of dollars today. So for me I will only advise he accept the responsibility of his lost and move on, because even if a court permit is been granted to kick-start his search for his lost Bitcoin hardware wallet, I doubt if he has any chance of recovery it. Or even if he does, it should be damaged by now.

He should give up and admit "defeat". Regret is a difficult thing to live with, but he should just accept that he made a mistake, and nobody is above mistake. If he needs therapy to deal with then he should see a licensed therapist to help me through the process.  But making bitcoin look bad is something that the community will not accept at all.

It is even possible that if he had put in this much effort that he had put in in looking for the drive, into accumulating bitcoin through other means he probably would have gotten the 8k bitcoin. He must deal with himself and not with the local council.

Your post gave me an idea.

Why should James conflict with the city council in attempts to obtain what is prohibited? In this case, it is precisely what is prohibited from the point of view of their legislation and harm to the environment. Why dig through a mountain of garbage, move it somewhere, just for the sake of one hard drive? Ok. James wants to get his disk/ bitcoins, but he may change his approach in negotiations with the city council. The tactic of threatening to bankrupt them, sue them is an aggressive policy that breeds evil and destructive actions. Why shouldn't James offer a different solution? For example, should recycle all this garbage? As I understand it, he found investors willing to allocate money to find a hard drive. So let them use this money to build a waste processing plant and clean out a landfill in search of a hard drive, clean up the surrounding area, not harm nature, obtain raw materials for recycling, and so on. What is the problem? What's the problem with agreeing win-win? James will get what he wants, the city council will solve the landfill problem with the help of other people’s investments, the city residents will get a clean area and a solution to the garbage problem. Even if the disk or bitcoins is not found, then everyone will win. Even James, who may not get his btc, but will become a local hero in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Perhaps even investors will make some profit from the sale of secondary raw materials for waste processing and the built processing plant, which can be used in the future, because there will already be a client in the form of this city.

I understand that in reality everything will be more difficult to organize and arrange, but instead of conflicts, why not try to come to an agreement in the most beneficial way for each party?

If story had developed according to this scenario, then instead of shouting that bitcoin is harming the surrounding nature, we would have heard that bitcoin is helping nature, which man has polluted with his activities, to become cleaner. Why not a newspaper headline?

Hes mad. I doubt the hard drive will still be intact, it will not be recoverable anymore after years of being soggy under the juicy trash. He didn't yet have those BTC yet but he already act this way. He will be worse than this when he found and recovers the BTC.

It would be surprising that none of his close friends or family ever advised him to give up that hard drive and try mining again. Suing the city for his carelessness is just not the way to go. After years of him dreaming that it will be found one day made him so entitled that he has the right to dig just about wherever he may want.

He must pay all cost of the procedure even it is approved but he does not have money to pay cost. His offer is if he find that disk and get the keys, he will have money to pay the cost and local council will be shared a proportion of restored bitcoins.

It is not a good deal because local council does see risk that they will not get anything after all of this. If I am a local council member, I don't accept this offer. They are realistic but the man is not, he lost his mind. Many slim chances multiply with each other and makes his net chance is zero.

He has lost his mind, he plans to bankrupt the whole town because they are not letting him try and waste more money on finding something that for sure is destroyed by now, it's a damn harddisk thrown in a rotting pile of garbage after hundreds of tracked dozers have gone over it, the chances of it being in once piece are slim, the chances of anything being readable are zero, the chances of getting the keys...common!


It was a laptop HDD, something happened to it a while after he stopped mining and he dismantled and sold a few of the pieces but not the HDD, by mistake his girlfriend as the story threw away the bag with the HDD instead of another one. There was no hard wallet or cold wallet and most importantly there is actually no proof he had them in the first place at all on that HDD other than him remembering doing some mining.


Not to mention that he claims she stopped him from mining more in 2009 because of the noise the laptop was making at night. But in the end, he not only lost the coins he lost his family as both his wife and kids left him, and now probably the whole digging plan is the only thing he has left or cares about.

So according to you, one man saying shit to their local council in a part of a city and threatening them is going to make Bitcoin overall look bad? Your logic is way shittier than what he's doing.
No one cares about this man and his city's council. Bitcoin is perfectly fine, and can only be good or bad if something happens on the blockchain, not on roads. Understand this for now.

On the topic, the man is delusional, and doesn't deserve those 8K bitcoin back anytime soon.

How about he finds a place to take all the garbage, and then pays the costs to move the ENTIRE landfill to that location, along with the cleanup of the existing area. He also has to pay for any damage caused buy the move and anything else involved with it.

Once it's in the new location, he can sort though it there on his own time.

-Dave

Is losing a lot of money sad? Yes, of course it is. But it's not like he lost his life savings or money he crucially needed to save a loved one or whatever. The sooner a person lets go in a situation like this, the better. But the article says it's been a decade since the loss, so he's been poisoning his life and the lives of people around him for 10 years, while that time could have been spent on doing something productive, figuring out who you want to be in life etc. By continuing the attempts to get a permission to big through the landfill despite a clear and reasonable position of the local council, he's letting this thing continue to destroy his life.

I've heard this story before (about James Howells losing a hard drive with a lot of bitcoin) about trying to start excavations at the city dump. It turns out that, having failed to achieve success in negotiations with the city council, James decided to take decisive and drastic actions. We stock up on popcorn and wait for the next episode.

The hero of this story is obsessed with the lost bitcoin. Look, he spent 10 years of his life and what result did it lead to? Nothng. Sometimes need to let go of the past, because in pursuit of the past can lose the present. To be honest, I don't expect him to win in court or get any money from the city council. Howells will once again waste time and material resources. The same thing could have happened even if he had been allowed to dig up the dump. The disk might not be found at all, or it might turn out to be unrecoverable.

This is a good example of mind-blowing perseverance and determination, but it is completely unknown where this will lead. Either James will receive the desired wealth, or all his efforts will be in vain and having wasted all his energy trying to grasp the past, he will lose his future.