Hard drive with £150 million in bitcoin on it thrown away

Is this the same subject (photo I took while testing camera - 14/12/2014)?
P1000086.JPG
 
A consumer grade drive after going through a trash compactor and spending 10 years in landfill will not be in a happy state (which makes me slightly dubious about his claim to be an "IT engineer", because he's far too optimistic).

He's on LinkedIn and that says he's a former IT systems engineer and then he lists a load of computer type skills. What he might want to do is change the part under his name where he's put he "knows a bit about computers" lol
 
I can see why he is an 'unhappy' man - but needs to remember, when he was 'Mining' the coins were only worth pennies, not millions....
He claims the coins were worth £4 million when the hard drive was thrown away.

Still a bit careless, in my opinion.
 
If the aforementioned HDD was not suitably labelled and backed up and safely stored (eg fireproof safe) I have little sympathy with the poor chap.

That's assuming of course that he wasn't bull sheeting and doesn't just have a bin dipping fetish and wants some other gullible eejit to fund it for him on a grand scale. o_O
 
Last edited:
I don't know anything about Bitcoin, but is his holding not recorded on a server somewhere out in cyberspace?
 
I don't know anything about Bitcoin, but is his holding not recorded on a server somewhere out in cyberspace?
No, apparently the anonymity of Bitcoin is its strength and, in this case, its weakness. In the early days of Bitcoin many people found their wallets mysteriously emptied with nothing they could do about it.
 
I don't know anything about Bitcoin, but is his holding not recorded on a server somewhere out in cyberspace?
Not in any useable sense. The transactions (his bitcoin rewards for 'mining' or any other bitcoins that were sent to him) will have been recorded on the Blockchain just like any other. But to access his coins he needs the wallet where he stored them along with the private key to access them.

The alternative to providing safe custody for your own bitcoins is to trust an online exchange. This is rather like a bank, but with the added frison of excitement that the owners could at any moment close it down and run off with all your money (this has happened several times).
 
There was an interesting story in Wired, a company had figured out how to prevent the USB's max # of attempts routine wiping the contents and then how to figure out the password with brute force

But strangely Howells isn't interested and also hasn't persuade other routes he claims to have started

 
There was an interesting story in Wired, a company had figured out how to prevent the USB's max # of attempts routine wiping the contents and then how to figure out the password with brute force

But strangely Howells isn't interested and also hasn't persuade other routes he claims to have started

^Howells doesn’t have the physical hard drive (it’s ‘suspected’ to be in the rubbish dump) so the above password cracking won’t work, as they have nothing to crack :)
 
I don't know anything about Bitcoin, but is his holding not recorded on a server somewhere out in cyberspace?
The encrypted versions of the data are stored across multiple servers in cyberspace and can be accessed by anybody. The key (to your wallet) is personal to you and back then (this is going a number of years) it was usually stored as a password protected file on your local computer. These days you can store the key online with 2FA and ways of recoverying it.

Here are a couple of stories, thing is much of it is urban lore so who knows whats real and what isn't. The top story would be worth $30bn but trying to cash in that many coins would most likely destablise the currancy.

 
^Howells doesn’t have the physical hard drive (it’s ‘suspected’ to be in the rubbish dump) so the above password cracking won’t work, as they have nothing to crack :)

Ah I was thinking of Stefan Thomas whose $235million is on an encrypted USB and he has two more chances to remember the password otherwise the USB software will erase the contents
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom