The Briton wants to find a $ 352.5 million Bitcoin hard drive thrown into a landfill and asks NASA for help

A resident of the UK threw a 7,500 BTC hard drive in a landfill 8 years ago. Now he is trying unsuccessfully to find the HDD and asks for help from NASA.

What is known

In 2013, 35-year-old IT specialist James Howells from Newport lost his HDD drive, which contained the keys to a wallet with 7,500 Bitcoin coins. At that time, the cost of the cryptocurrency was approximately $ 665,000. Now, with a rate of about $ 47,000 per coin, assets are estimated at about $ 352,500,000.

For eight years, the Briton tried unsuccessfully to get permission to search for the hard drive. It is assumed that the storage is now at a depth of 1 m. The dump is comparable to the size of a football field.

Howells said that anyone who helps locate the disc will receive approximately $ 1,330,000 (£ 1,000,000). In addition, he is ready to donate 25% of the amount to the Covid Relief Fund.

At the beginning of the year, the landfill's management banned prospecting based on environmental concerns. Now James Howells is asking NASA experts for help, who in 2003 were able to recover data from the HDD of the Columbia space shuttle, which fell to Earth. Experts point out that the probability of recovering data from a disk is 80-90% if the drive has not been physically destroyed.

A source: Interesting Engineering