A man accidentally dumped a hard drive with 7.5 thousand bitcoins and now he has been begging the city administration for help, and in return promises to donate £ 52.5 million to residents.
A resident of the UK, James Howells, accidentally threw away his hard drive into a landfill, which contained an electronic wallet with 7.5 thousand bitcoins worth £ 210 million (more than $270 million). He has been asking the city authorities to help him to find the lost drive, writes the BBC.
The man accidentally threw away the disc back in 2013. After that, he repeatedly asked the city administration for help, but each time he was refused.
“The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area. The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds – without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order,” a Newport administration official said.
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The Briton himself thinks differently. He insists that finding the disc is easy. He knows the date when he threw away the hard drive, and in the landfill, garbage was piled up in certain places at certain periods. He will hire a professional team to search.
Howells has already managed to find investors willing to pay for the search. He will pay them with the found bitcoins.
The Briton also said that in case of assistance from the administration, he is ready to donate up to 25% of the value of the cryptocurrency to his hometown.
“I haven’t actually made an offer to them today, but I’m willing to increase my offer to them to 25%. On today’s valuation that would be £52.5m and I’d like to put that into a Covid relief fund for the citizens of Newport,” said James Howles.