Lost Bitcoins Man is still trying

SexyGreyFox said:
Here's a couple of questions:

1) In my Coinbase I had £1.27 two months ago and it is now on £1.89 which is massive increase but if let's say we called it £189,000 how would I turn that into pounds in my normal bank?

2) If I go in my Coinbase on my APP or on my PC I can get my bitcoin from anywhere, how is this blokes Bitcoin on his drive or does he mean his passwords are on the drive?
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Someone can explain this better but basically,

1: You would "sell" your bitcoin for FIAT currency.
2: You can store bitcoin on exchanges and on offline wallets (usb sticks/hard drives etc)
 
Thekwango said:
is this chap right enough in the head?! i know it must be devastating knowing he's lost it but surely this is just bonkers. what are the chances of finding the drive, let alone finding it in a sufficiently working condition - they gotta be slim as a slim thing on slim fast.
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Yup. I guess it could be recoverable, but there is absolutely no way he is going to find it.
 
Given that councils are broke everywhere, and also partial to backhanders/corruption etc. I'm surprised they have not taken this opportunity up with the guy to generate revenue. Surely a contract could be drawn up to the council's liking to allow the search and put back the landfill to how it was but better at minimum, and if the coins recovered, council is given some of the money?
I hope he is allowed to try to search for it. I could completely understand the obsession. The chances of the drive being damaged beyond repair is quite high though.
 
Myself and a friend mined over 1000 bitcoin when it just came out.
Was fun for some teenagers to do.

However, we traded it for some food to a chap who we thought was mental.... he's now a billionaire and I'm poor...
 
SpellowHouse said:
Yup. I guess it could be recoverable, but there is absolutely no way he is going to find it.
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I take a different outlook. If it 100% went to that landfill site, the chances are very good, if you have the resource to search every possible piece of rubbish. He is talking about AI to help speed up search. Hard drives are surprisingly tough. Some of the platters are actually quite thick and hard to break. Yes some of them shatter easily, but some are thicker. Hard drives are both fragile, and tough. Fragile in that the mechanical arm/seek stuff can break down easily, but the actual platters can be fine. Different drives that are similar can be borrowed for the PCB/electronics to aid recovery. There are lots of methods. He could use specialist recovery firms such as the guy in the youtube vid.
There is every hope they could be retrievable. People want him to fail because people naturally hold no sympathy for others winning like on the lottery etc.
 
jaybee said:
I take a different outlook. If it 100% went to that landfill site, the chances are very good, if you have the resource to search every possible piece of rubbish. He is talking about AI to help speed up search. Hard drives are surprisingly tough. Some of the platters are actually quite thick and hard to break. Yes some of them shatter easily, but some are thicker. Hard drives are both fragile, and tough. Fragile in that the mechanical arm/seek stuff can break down easily, but the actual platters can be fine. Different drives that are similar can be borrowed for the PCB/electronics to aid recovery. There are lots of methods. He could use specialist recovery firms such as the guy in the youtube vid.
There is every hope they could be retrievable. People want him to fail because people naturally hold no sympathy for others winning like on the lottery etc.
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I said it was probably recoverable.

The problem is that by now it could be under forty feet of rubbish, the size of several football pitches. Finding it would be impossible without pretty much emptying the landfill. No one is going to lend him the money to do that. And where is he going to put the rubbish he has processed before he can move it back?
 
SpellowHouse said:
The problem is that by now it could be under forty feet of rubbish, the size of several football pitches. Finding it would be impossible without pretty much emptying the landfill. No one is going to lend him the money to do that. And where is he going to put the rubbish he has processed before he can move it back?
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Watch Dowie's video, all explained and stuff these people have done before.
 
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The moral of the story is...Never throw away old hard drives.

Of the platters are still undamaged it's recoverable. It won't be cheap but it's doable.

Also how does he know his ex didn't actually cash them in. The bank won't divulge what someone else has in their account :D
 
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SexyGreyFox said:
Watch Dowie's video, all explained and stuff these people have done before.
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I watched that and read the councils point of view on all of this.

It's a pretty typical council response - patronising.

I am not sure it makes any difference, though. If they don't want to let him dig it up, I can't see he can force them.
 
decmatt said:
www.bbc.co.uk

James Howells searches for hard drive with £4m-worth of bitcoins stored

A man is searching a landfill site hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.
www.bbc.co.uk

He binned it after spilling Lemonade on a Laptop, realised mistake in 2013 after he claimed he binned it

Then it suddenly changed to his girlfriend binned it
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Ah that perhaps does change things a bit, perhaps there may be a key legal difference there re: the prospects of his current case?

Maybe something along the lines of if he had willingly disposed of it (perhaps even if done so absentmindedly) then he doesn't have a claim as I'd guess there are T&Cs relating to the rubbish tip that anything you willingly hand over there becomes the property of the council or at least that you forfeit any right to recover etc.

But presumably, if his claim is that some third party binned it instead (apparently his ex) then he's not a party to any agreement forfeiting the property or relinquishing any claim to it, instead, the drive still belongs to him and is on their land.

If a kid accidentally kicks a ball (or I guess these days loses control of a drone) over your garden you're obliged to hand it back, so I guess his argument is that this is valuable property that he's not willingly relinquished and just wants back, the council then has an argument re: cost/health and safety and he's got some counter-argument re: some plan he's come up with along with specialists and investors.

I guess if someone accidentally dropped say an engagement ring in a skip at the local tip the staff would perhaps assist in recovery, it's not something you willingly intended to relinquish to them... but that's a lower barrier for assistance, I guess he's got to argue about how reasonable his request is given the councils concerns but if his story has changed then that in itself might scupper things.
 
dowie said:
Ah that perhaps does change things a bit, perhaps there may be a key legal difference there re: the prospects of his current case?

Maybe something along the lines of if he had willingly disposed of it (perhaps even if done so absentmindedly) then he doesn't have a claim as I'd guess there are T&Cs relating to the rubbish tip that anything you willingly hand over there becomes the property of the council or at least that you forfeit any right to recover etc.

But presumably, if his claim is that some third party binned it instead (apparently his ex) then he's not a party to any agreement forfeiting the property or relinquishing any claim to it, instead, the drive still belongs to him and is on their land.

If a kid accidentally kicks a ball (or I guess these days loses control of a drone) over your garden you're obliged to hand it back, so I guess his argument is that this is valuable property that he's not willingly relinquished and just wants back, the council then has an argument re: cost/health and safety and he's got some counter-argument re: some plan he's come up with along with specialists and investors.

I guess if someone accidentally dropped say an engagement ring in a skip at the local tip the staff would perhaps assist in recovery, it's not something you willingly intended to relinquish to them... but that's a lower barrier for assistance, I guess he's got to argue about how reasonable his request is given the councils concerns but if his story has changed then that in itself might scupper things.
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You are probably right about that.
 
This story speaks volumes about the world we live in.

Humans creating landfill and dumping rubbish, one human obsessed with finding something seemingly valuable in said rubbish but really it's just a concept we invented.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
www.google.com

Dad who binned £275m Bitcoin hard drive wants to sue council for £1billion

James Howells could bankrupt Newport City Council, he says, following his 10-year battle with the Labour-controlled authority to retrieve a hard drive thought to have been chucked in a tip
www.google.com www.google.com
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I feel for the bloke he'll I think anyone who has minded at any time has a story (I deleted 6 mined BTC at the very start because it was obviously a fad and not going anywhere ... I went back to folding@home.
however his is an extreme case. however suing the council for dumping stuff in a tip? that is silly.
 
jaybee said:
Given that councils are broke everywhere, and also partial to backhanders/corruption etc. I'm surprised they have not taken this opportunity up with the guy to generate revenue. Surely a contract could be drawn up to the council's liking to allow the search and put back the landfill to how it was but better at minimum, and if the coins recovered, council is given some of the money?
I hope he is allowed to try to search for it. I could completely understand the obsession. The chances of the drive being damaged beyond repair is quite high though.
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The council should just search for it themselves, smash it with a hammer and say that's how they found it so he can wallow for the rest of his life.
 
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