A resident of Newport (Wales) offered the city a share of $ 70 million for help in finding his hard drive In the US, a programmer is trying to remember the password to a $ 220 million bitcoin wallet. He has two attempts left of 7.5 thousand bitcoins. Their value now exceeds $ 270 million.
This was reported by CNN.
Britain’s James Havells obtained the cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he later threw away the hard drive on which he stored these bitcoins. According to him, he accidentally threw the drive away with the garbage.
Havells asked the Newport City Council to allow the excavation of a certain area of the landfill, where, in his opinion, was the hard drive. Instead, he offered to pay the council 25% of the current value of the “treasure”.
That would be about £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the whole city (Newport’s population is 316,000). Unfortunately, they declined the offer and will not even discuss the matter with me- Havells complains.
The programmer’s plan was to excavate a certain area of the landfill based on the coordinate system and find the hard drive, while adhering to all standards of safety and environmental protection. He would then pass the hard drive to a data recovery specialist. At the same time, Havells is ready to share not only with the residents of Newport, but also with companies that would take part in the search for the drive.
A spokeswoman for Newport City Council told CNN that the city council did not allow Havells to excavate the site. In addition, the city council also noted that the cost of excavating the landfill, storage and treatment of waste could be millions of pounds – “without any guarantee that searchers will find what they are looking for and that it will be working.”