British Man Accidentally Lost 300 Billion Won in Bitcoin... "Please Let Me Dig at the Landfill"

James Howells accidentally threw away a hard disk drive containing Bitcoin. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Nahana] A British man who accidentally threw away a hard disk drive containing Bitcoin worth about 300 billion won has promised a large donation to local government authorities to excavate the landfill site and recover it.

On the 16th (local time), according to major foreign media, James Howells, an IT industry worker in Newport, Wales, UK, proposed to the Newport City Council that if they allow him to excavate the landfill site where his drive containing Bitcoin seems to be buried, he would donate 52.5 million pounds (about 78.7 billion won).

He said the drive contains 7,500 Bitcoins. Currently, the price of one Bitcoin is 41 million won, making the total worth about 307.5 billion won.

He said he had been mining cryptocurrency since 2009, but at that time, the value of Bitcoin was very low, so he forgot about the existence of this drive.

Later, when the price of one Bitcoin soared to $1,200 (about 1.3 million won), Howells decided to search for the drive but found out that he accidentally threw it away between June and August 2013.

He planned to track the whereabouts of the drive by visiting the waste disposal site and use a coordinate reference system to excavate a specific part of the landfill.

Howells said, "If I recover the Bitcoin, I will donate 25% of my Bitcoins or 52.5 million pounds," adding, "If the promise is fulfilled, the 316,000 residents of Newport City could each receive 175 pounds (about 260,000 won)."

He further explained, "About half of the remaining amount will be returned to those who invested in this plan, and I will keep the remaining 25%."

However, the authorities stated that they cannot excavate the area he mentioned due to environmental issues.

The Newport City Council said, "At present, we cannot permit this," adding, "Excavating here would have a significant impact on the surrounding environment, and it could cost millions of pounds to dig up the landfill, re-bury it, and handle the residual waste."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.