Crypto user who lost $163 million in Bitcoin wants to deploy bot search group: Report

James Howells, a British man who mistakenly discarded a hard drive containing roughly 7,500 Bitcoin in 2013, has reportedly started looking into having robots and humans work together to retrieve his crypto from a local dump.

According to a Sunday report from Business Insider, Howells has pitched an $11 million idea to find and recover the lost hard drive, which may be surrounded by up to approximately 110,000 tons of debris. The proposal, backed by a few venture capitalists, would have people, robotic dogs and other machines pick up and sort through the landfill’s trash for up to three years until the lost Bitcoin (BTC) is found, while another version of Howell’s plan would cost $6 million and take 18 months.

Many crypto users know Howell’s actions as a telling story about the importance of keeping track of their coins, either by securely storing private keys or a physical hardware wallet. The Brit threw away the hard drive containing BTC in 2013, thinking it was empty, and realized months later that he had potentially lost millions of dollars in crypto.

Newport City Council, the government body responsible for overseeing operations at the dump that allegedly contains the lost BTC hard drive, has reportedly refused Howell’s previous attempts to retrieve the device. A report from January 2021 – when the BTC price was more than $30,000 – suggested that he had offered the city up to 25% of the value of the lost BTC as a relief donation amid rising costs due to the pandemic, but he was still not given the opportunity to apply.

“There is nothing Mr. Howells could present to us [for approval],” a council representative reportedly said. “His proposals pose a significant ecological risk, which we cannot accept and are in fact prevented from assessing by the terms of our permit.”

At the time of publication, 7,500 BTC was worth approximately $163 million amid crypto market volatility. Howells’ plan, if approved and successfully executed, would reportedly allow him to keep about 30% of the Bitcoin, with the rest going to the recovery team, investors and Newport’s 150,000 residents — about $60 each to the members of the latter. group.

“If we succeed in recovering the coins, I made a promise to the people of Newport to literally give the people of Newport crypto directly,” Howells said in an interview with journalist Richard Hammond. “I could spend the rest of my life working a day and never come close to any of the value that’s on that hard drive.”

Howells planned to speak to the council in the coming weeks. Should the members reject the plan, the Bitcoiner reportedly said he could pursue a legal route to force a search of the dump by claiming the crypto on his hard drive was illegally blocked.

Related: Lost Bitcoin may be a “donation”, but does it hinder adoption?

Some experts have made a name for themselves in the crypto space by recovering millions of dollars worth of lost or forgotten coins. In August 2021, wallet recovery service KeychainX reported that it had access to a six-year-old wallet containing 10 million Dogecoin (DOGE) – worth about $3 million at the time. Joe Grand, a computer engineer and hardware hacker, also recovered more than $2 million from a Trezor One hardware wallet in January.