Programmer searches for 7,500 lost bitcoins in garbage dump: $240 million worth

Recently, the price of Bitcoin has been rising wildly, not only breaking through $30,000 for the first time, but even reaching a high of $34,500. Those who have lost their Bitcoins are now regretting it.

According to foreign media reports, British IT engineer James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing the private keys of 7,500 bitcoins as garbage. Based on the current price of $32,000, it is estimated to be about $240 million. He said he regretted it and could only sigh at the garbage dump.

James mined 7,500 bitcoins on his personal computer since 2009. But as fate would have it, in 2013, he threw away the hard drive containing the secret key.

"Yesterday, they told me that any trash that comes in here is going to be compacted and put into landfill," James said during an interview at the landfill. "I really want to go back and not throw away that hard drive."

Of course, the "lost" bitcoins are not actually gone. The blockchain will record how many bitcoins you have, but you need a private key to trade. But the private key is a very complex string of letters and symbols.

Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis released a report in June 2020 showing that at least 3.7 million bitcoins had not been touched for at least five years.

Crypto data company Glassnode estimates that approximately 3 million Bitcoins are lost forever. Since the October 2020 bull run, approximately $7 billion in Bitcoin has been found.