Man Accidentally Throws Away $60M in Bitcoin
Losing one's passwords is something that haunts all bitcoin investors. That horror recently turned a reality for one man, as detailed in the New York Post.
James Howells lost a hard drive with the key to more than $60 million in bitcoin.
“I mined more than 7,500 coins over one week’s time in 2009; there were just six of us doing it at the time, and it was like the early days of a gold rush,” said the IT worker turned crypto investor, 32, who lives in Newport, Wales.
“Four years later, I had two hard drives in a desk drawer. One was empty and the other contained my bitcoin private keys,” Howells recalled. “I meant to throw away the empty drive — and I accidentally threw away the one with the bitcoin information.”
From the Post:
Howells didn’t realize the value of his coins for a few weeks after he lost them. “I looked up the price, did the calculation . . . and thought, ‘S - - t. [My investment is] worth around $2 [million] or $3 million.’ A few months later it was worth $9.9 million. I was annoyed, pissed off, sick. I spoke to the people at the landfill and told them that I threw away a hard drive worth $10 million. They looked at me stupidly.”
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
