{"id":34723,"date":"2021-01-14T15:03:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T13:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=34723"},"modified":"2025-08-28T21:55:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:55:36","slug":"man-who-lost-7500-btc-offers-newport-council-72m-to-search-landfill-for-disk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/man-who-lost-7500-btc-offers-newport-council-72m-to-search-landfill-for-disk\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who lost 7,500 BTC offers Newport council $72m to search landfill for disk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Howells has offered Newport city council, United Kingdom, around $72 million to excavate the municipal landfill where his hard drive containing 7,500 BTC ended up, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southwalesargus.co.uk\/news\/19009245.newport-man-offers-council-52-5m-search-bitcoin-hard-drive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">South Wales Argus<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The engineer says he discarded the device in 2013 into a bin that was assigned a number and a corresponding spot on the landfill.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf I gain access to the landfill records, I will be able to determine the exact location of the hard drive,\u201d Howells said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A Newport City Council spokesperson said that this is not the first such request. The council&#8217;s position is that excavations are not feasible for legal, economic and environmental reasons.<\/p>\n<p>However, in the new inquiry Howells said he had secured backing from a hedge fund that is willing to finance the search for the lost bitcoins.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe outer casing could have rusted. But the disk on which the data are stored should work,\u201d Howells said with some hope.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The engineer pledged to donate 25% of $286.5 million in BTC if the disk is found, provided the municipality grants permission to search.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, on January 13, the former Ripple <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/former-ripple-cto-stefan-thomas-reveals-loss-of-access-to-7002-btc-wallet\">said he had lost access<\/a> to a wallet containing 7002 BTC.<\/p>\n<p>According to Chainalysis, about $140 billion in Bitcoin, or 20% of the existing 18.5 million BTC, sits in forgotten or lost wallets.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog news on <a href=\"https:\/\/vk.com\/forklogcom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">VK<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Howells has offered Newport city council, United Kingdom, around $72 million to excavate the municipal landfill where his hard drive containing 7,500 BTC ended up, according to the South Wales Argus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-34723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bitcoin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"18","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34725,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34723\/revisions\/34725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}