Imagine if you have wealth worth billions and you accidentally throw it in the garbage... Something similar happened with james Howles, an IT engineer living in Newport city of Wales. In the year 2013, he accidentally threw an old hard drive in which the key of his 8,000 bitcoins i.e. 'private key' was saved. At that time, the price of bitcoins may not have been much, but today these wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW'>digital coins are worth about Rs 6,000 crores.
The mistake that became the biggest mistake of life
In 2013, when many people did not take bitcoin seriously, james also considered it just a wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW'>digital experiment. One day while cleaning the office, he considered the old hard drive useless and threw it straight in the garbage field. He had no idea that there was a treasure hidden in that small hard drive.
Then the real battle began
As the price of bitcoin began to skyrocket, james realized his mistake. He decided to bring back that hard drive at any cost. For this, he made a technical plan—with the help of drones, robots and sensors, preparations were made to excavate the landfill site. james was also ready to bear the cost of this entire mission himself. He just needed the approval of the local administration.
But only walls were found
The Newport City Council refused to give him permission to dig. The reason was the potential damage to the environment, leakage of toxic gases and contamination of ground water. Not only this, according to british law, once something is thrown into a landfill, it no longer becomes the property of that person but of the site.
Also knocked the door of the court
james did not give up hope. He took the legal route, but in 2024 a british court made it clear that now there is no real possibility of finding that hard drive. The court believed that the hard drive would have deteriorated in so many years and its chances of working were almost over.
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