Can you imagine what it feels like to throw away 5.2 billion as garbage? There's a guy who accidentally threw away a hard drive with eight thousand Bitcoins, worth 5.2 billion yuan; just listening to it makes one feel unbearable. Eleven years have passed, and he is still waiting at the landfill!
In order to get the government to agree to turn the landfill upside down, both sides fell into a protracted tug-of-war. This hard drive was thrown away by his girlfriend, who is now his ex-girlfriend. The whole incident combines elements of mystery, comedy, and melodrama.
The unluckiest person in history is named James Howells.
Living in Newport, UK, he is a programmer, with family members including his girlfriend Eddie and their two sons. Back in 2009, James curiously followed the trend of mining Bitcoin, mining for several months and accumulating about eight thousand coins.
At that time, Bitcoin had not significantly appreciated, and his girlfriend complained that the computer's cooling fan was too noisy to sleep, so he stopped mining. After all, the girlfriend is the most important, right?
Half a year later, James accidentally spilled lemonade on his laptop, rendering it unusable, so he sold all the sellable parts and switched to an Apple computer.
At that time, the Apple system was not compatible with Bitcoin keys, so he took out the hard drive that stored eight thousand Bitcoins and casually placed it in the desk drawer.
For more than three years, James lived a stable life with his wife and children, conveniently forgetting about the Bitcoin issue!
The trend of decluttering came — in a messy desk drawer, he found two hard drives, one was blank, and the other was the one with Bitcoin.
He casually picked it up, thinking it was blank, and tossed it into a black garbage bag; his girlfriend threw the pile of garbage away the next morning.
"That's right, he turned and walked towards the mountain."
A few months later, when he saw the news of someone buying a house with Bitcoin, he retrieved the hard drive and opened it, only to find a blank screen; it felt like the sky had fallen.
Who could blame him? He couldn't give up. After long investigations and calculations, James believed that the bag of garbage was located five centimeters underground at a nearby landfill, and immediately applied to the local council to dig it out.
However, the city council claimed that digging up the garbage would cause severe pollution in the nearby area and rejected his application every time.
The treasure hunt begins! He quit his job to search for that hard drive full-time. To fund the treasure hunt, he even crowdfunded online, promising that once he found the pile of Bitcoin, he would distribute the profits proportionally to everyone!
This funding raised an equivalent of 67 million yuan. He hired professional search personnel, narrowing the location of the hard drive down to a 200-meter range, and applied to the city council, stating that he would cover the excavation costs of millions or tens of millions.
However, the city council rejected his application again, citing that there were millions of tons of garbage piled up here, which would cause environmental pollution.
Over the years, James has become more and more resilient, even inviting data experts who have business dealings with NASA. James promised the experts that once Bitcoin was exchanged, he would give them thirty percent of the reward.
In the tug-of-war between the two sides, the value of Bitcoin also skyrocketed.
Can you guess? By now, James's eight thousand Bitcoins have risen to over 500 million pounds, roughly 5.2 billion yuan. This mountain of gold is right in front of him, but he can't touch it; anyone would go crazy.
So over the past few years, James has been funding donations to the landfill, using interests to pull the landfill officials to his side, installing a large number of surveillance cameras, hiring security to patrol the garbage mountain 24/7, and he even plans to get two robotic dogs to prevent anyone from stealthily digging up his treasure!
He kept digging, kept applying, and kept being rejected.
Watching Bitcoin continue to soar, this October, James teamed up with his prestigious legal team to sue the city council for compensation for his losses, aiming to pressure the local government to allow him to mine garbage. However, the city council still disagreed!
In my opinion, James's offer is still not enough.
Some foreign media also believe that whether the council's position will ease in the future remains to be seen.
Just sharing this dramatic story with everyone; if this hard drive cannot be found, his life would be over. What do you think?