The Secret History of Bitcoin: I thought I only lost a few hundred dollars, but I regretted it in the end

Source: Hashpai

Author: LucyCheng

How much does an ordinary computer hard drive cost? Probably a price that you wouldn’t mind losing. But a hard drive with 7,500 bitcoins is different. When the BTC price reached its peak, it was worth more than 100 million US dollars.

Today, this hard drive, which was once worth hundreds of millions of dollars, should still be lying in a garbage dump; and its owner is still upset about his carelessness. James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, UK, is the protagonist who missed the billionaire; he started mining in 2009 and mined a total of 7,500 bitcoins in the four years he ran a bitcoin node.

In order to store these bitcoins well, James later sold his computer parts on eBay and kept the hard drive containing the wallet files separately, hoping to sell it after it appreciated in value. But fate played a trick on him. During a year-end cleanup in 2013, he accidentally threw the hard drive away as garbage. When the price of Bitcoin soared in 2017, James thought of these BTCs again, only to find that the hard drive containing the huge assets had disappeared.

James Howells lost 7500 BTC (Image source: Internet)

Unwilling to give up, James even wanted to initiate a plan to dig up the city's landfill in an attempt to retrieve the hard drive that he couldn't let go of. But this is not an easy project, "digging a modern landfill is a complex project, and there will be various environmental problems during the excavation, such as dangerous gas leaks or potential fire risks, etc." In general, this is a large, expensive and high-risk engineering project.

As expected, the Newport City Council did not approve James' application; but even if it did, looking for a hard drive in a garbage dump that had been buried for three years was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and the hard drive might have been broken long ago after coexisting with toxic waste and under heavy pressure. Perhaps to make up for his regrets, James later devoted himself to the field of cryptocurrency; he not only supported the development of Bitcoin Cash, but also led a device development team, hoping to vigorously promote the implementation of cryptocurrency payments.

Screenshot from: Reddit

However, we mentioned in the article “How Many Bitcoins Were Sucked Away by the “Black Hole”? | The Secret History of Bitcoin” that there are countless experiences of losing Bitcoins due to various strange reasons; not only James, but also Gizmodo editor Campbell Simpson, Reddit user Rengade, Bitcointalk user Stone Man, etc. are also among the unlucky ones. However, Rengade is not as optimistic as James. After losing his Bitcoins, he posted a post on Reddit titled “Bitcoin Ruined My Life” to express his depression.

“I never thought I’d become a millionaire, nor did I want to… but damn, the 20 euros I spent in 2010 affected my life so much. From that day (I discovered the loss of the Bitcoin), I regretted and regretted every minute of my life. I could have used that money to change myself and help my family and friends. Now I can’t sleep at night, as if I had lost my life goal. I’m seeking help from a psychologist… but it doesn’t help.” It’s worth mentioning that this post was published by Rengade in 2014; if he found that the price of Bitcoin had risen higher later, it might be even more heartbreaking.

Under this post, many netizens comforted Rengade and tried to help him forget the pain. "Think about it, if Bitcoin goes to zero now, will it affect your current life? Get over it, work hard, and recover slowly, most people do it anyway," an anonymous netizen commented. Although this is true, if you think about it from another perspective, it seems difficult to convince yourself to let go of such a considerable asset.

Link to this article: https://www.8btc.com/media/579063
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