Howells James (James Howells)

Howells James (James Howells)

Biography

2021: Search of the lost hard drive from 7500 bitcoins

In the middle of January, 2021 it became known of James Howells's request for the help to city authorities Newport (Wales). The British IT specialist offered 52.5 million pounds sterling ($71.7 million) for that to him helped to find accidentally thrown out hard drive on which 7500 bitcoins are kept.

According to Howells, he threw out in a trash can of HDD with cryptocurrency in 2013. At that time its cost was small, however by January 18, 2021 7500 bitcoins cost more than $272 million. The developer is ready to give 25% of this amount for the help in excavation of the landfill where, according to him, there can be that winchester.

The plan will be in digging out a certain area of a dump on the basis of a coordinate system and to recover the hard drive, observing at the same time all standards of security and environment protection. Then the disk will be provided to data recovery specialists who will be able to recover it from scratch with new parts and to try to recreate a tiny fragment of data which is necessary to me for access to bitcoins — James Howells in a conversation with CNN told.

He suggested city administration to distribute to all its inhabitants (about 316 thousand people) approximately 175 pounds sterling, however the authorities refused this offer and stated that they "will not even discuss this issue with me". The administration of Newport explained that carrying out excavation is impossible for the legal, economic and ecological reasons.

In addition to prohibition on independent "excavation" James Howells's problem is complicated also by the fact that since 2013 not the area, then at least, dump "height" increased if. So its hard drive is covered with the multimeter layer of garbage, years taken there from all Newport and, perhaps, its neighborhoods.^[1]

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