Newport man loses £4m worth of bit coin currency after throwing away hard drive

James Howells, 28, who lives on Cromwell Road, Newport, started generating, or mining, practically worthless electronic money called Bitcoins on a website in January 2009, but after his Dell laptop started to overheat, he stopped.

He had mined 7,500 Bitcoins in that time and stored them on a hard drive. Worth nothing when they were generated, they have seen a rapid increase in value due to the popularity of the website and have begun to be accepted by companies like Virgin.

The digital 'wallet' containing the cash is worth an estimated £4m and was thrown out in late summer.

In a desperate attempt to find it, he took a trip to the Docksway landfill site in Newport and was told the tip would only be sealed off if there needed to be a criminal investigation carried out.

And since he threw it away so much rubbish has been piled on top of what would have been thrown away in July and August, it will be virtually impossible to find.

James said the landfill site “will be 30 feet in the air when complete”.

He said is thinking about setting up a website www.returnmybitcoin.com in case the hard drive is found, but in the meantime has set up a wallet on the website where people can donate.

After he moved his office around, he put the computer and hard drive with the Bitcoins stored on it in a drawer in his office in 2010 when he bought a Mac computer and forgot about them.

Then using the computer, he spilled lemonade on it, broke it up and sold it for parts - but kept the hard drive.

And when he cleared out the office in July he inadvertently threw the hard drive away not remembering the potential value of what was stored on there. He only realised his mistake on Friday last week.

He said: “I have looked on USB sticks. I have spent hours trying to search on other hard drives - but nothing.

“It’s a bit of a drama at the moment.”

He is unable to access the Bitcoins because the serial number is stored on the drive.