Many will have heard the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, the computer programmer from Florida in the US, who famously paid 10 000 bitcoin (BTC) for two Papa John’s pizzas back in 2010. In today’s terms, those two pizzas cost $1.14 billion.
We’ve also heard of others who mined dozens or even hundreds of BTC in the early days and sold out when the price ‘doubled’ to $12. Today, BTC trades at around $114 000 (R2.1 million).
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This latest story of lost BTC is a bit of a head scratcher: British IT engineer James Howells accidentally threw away his hard drive containing 8 000 bitcoin, now worth more than $900 million (R16.2 billion), 12 years ago. He had been mining BTC for several years, back when thousands of people around the world were doing the same on their personal computers and it was worth just a few cents.
He tried for years to recover his hard drive from his local Newport landfill site, but to no avail.
“For over 12 years, I tried everything to engage with Newport City Council: public proposals, percentages, mediation, legal action and a formal £25 million-plus offer. $1 billion and they ignored it all. No response. No logic. No leadership,” he wrote on X.
Despite these setbacks, Howells vows not to give up on his quest to recover the hard drive.
According to The Block, he made a formal offer of between $33 million and $40 million to acquire and excavate the landfill site, to be paid for by the issue of a new token representing 21% of the lost wallet’s hard drive.
Read: SA house prices measured in bitcoin increase for the first time in a decade
In January, a UK judge rejected Howells’ attempt to recover the missing hard drive from landfill site, arguing that it was now the property of the council and that environmental permits forbade any attempt to excavate the site.
The BBC reported that he had repeatedly asked permission from the council to access the site, offering it a share of the missing bitcoin if recovered. Though the landfill holds more than 1.4 million tonnes of waste, Howells said he had narrowed the hard drive’s location to an area covering just 100 000 tonnes.
The council may own the hard drive, but Howells remains the legal owner of the 8 000 BTC. He is reported to have abandoned his efforts to purchase the landfill site and is no longer pursuing dialogue with the council or its representatives.
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Read: Michael Saylor’s strategy makes its third-largest bitcoin purchase ever
Howells told The Block he is now planning to tokenise his legal ownership of the lost 8 000 BTC into a new smart token named Ceiniog Coin (INI).
Imminent updates to the bitcoin network will allow for smart contracts not unlike that currently in use on the Ethereum network. These are self-executing contracts stored on the blockchain, much like a computer programme that carries out certain actions when specific conditions are met. Each token would represent a share of Howells’ legal claim to the 8 000 BTC or any future payout.
It’s a way of monetising his legal claim while keeping alive the prospect of eventually recovering the missing hard drive.
If anything, the story illustrates the hazards of self-custodying your crypto.
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