He threw away hard drives with 240 million in bitcoins, he wants to recover it

• He does not remember the password of the pendrive: he risks losing 220 million in Bitcoin

• Bitcoin unstoppable, it flies over 40 thousand dollars

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January 14, 2021 James Howells is trying to remedy the worst mistake of his life: the one he made in 2013, when he threw away a hard drive of a laptop that contained 7,500 bitcoins, the virtual currency whose value has soared over the years, and which today would allow the unwary resident of Newport, Wales, to count on a fortune of 210 million pounds (about 240 million euros).   

In order to get his hands on the lost hard risk, he asked the town hall of his city to look for it inside a landfill.

For this reason he is willing to donate 25% of the value of what was recovered, about 52.5 million pounds, to be allocated to an assistance fund for Covid patients.   

But the city administration, we read

, rejected Howells's offer, the latest of many to come in recent years from the man obsessed with losing a fortune as large as it is virtual.   

"The cost of digging the landfill, storing and treating the waste could amount to millions of pounds," a spokesperson for the Newport City Council stressed, pointing out that there would be no guarantee that the hard drive will be found, or if it comes too. recovered, to be able to access bitcoins.