For one very good reason, James Howells is an angry man.

Back in 2009, he snuck in super early and amassed around 7 500 bitcoin. At the time bitcoin was worth next to nothing, and he only stopped after his “girlfriend, fed up with the noise of block-mining hardware, made him”.

The British IT worker sold most of his equipment for scrap after he spilt lemonade on it, while the hard drive containing the key to his digital wallet sat in a drawer.

For three years.

And then he threw it away.

But in 2013, Howells began to “regret his hasty cleaning decisions,” explains Gizmodo:

At that time bitcoin’s market cap was beginning to climb, and his 7,500 lost coins were worth a few million. Four years later and he still—understandably—hasn’t let it go.

One bitcoin is currently valued at $11,500, making the small fortune Howells sent to a landfill a considerably larger fortune of over $80 million. Jokingly (we think), he asked The Guardian in 2013, “Why aren’t I out there with a shovel now?”

The current value of bitcoin at the time of writing would make those 7 500 worth around $88 million, or a cool R1,2 billion.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so they say.

After having a few years to reflect, Howells has decided to dig up a “huge plot of five-year-old dirt and garbage, risking “dangerous gasses and potential landfill fires” to recover a laptop hard drive that may or may not function”.

From blockchain mining to trash digging, what a life.

Maybe you should consider keeping your bitcoin somewhere safe like Luno.

[source:gizmodo]