An IT professional in the United Kingdom is scouring a landfill site for a specific computer part he threw away, along with a bitcoin fortune. James Howells of Newport, South Wales, disposed of the drive without realizing the value of its contents earlier this year, with the 7,500 bitcoins on the drive worth around $7.5 million at the currency’s present value.
Howells told the BBC that he had stored bitcoins he acquired by mining in 2009 on a computer, but later had to dismantle the machine after an accident. Left in storage for three years, Howells had forgot about his cache of bitcoins, and threw the drive away earlier this year. After hearing about a Norwegian man cashing in enough bitcoins to buy an apartment, Howells realised his mistake, and after failing to find a backup, he traveled to a landfill site that the drive would have been sent to in an attempt to get it back.
