Newport Bitcoin story that keeps on giving...

[johnofgwent]

That annoying, I wish you had said earlier, I am just standing outside the house (the missus wont let me in) after reading the story on Wales online. I have just got home after spending all night digging up the tip....

To be entirely truthful, I really would not have known this but for my wife's diligence


After the cack handed way Welsh Labour screwed over the Students and Staff at the University of South Wales, causing 30% redundancies, which Moira saw coming and jumped in the first wave, taking a far better redundancy deal than any subsequent one offered, before she got her current job doing admin work for the Min of Justice, she went temping, and for three months took over the admin at Newport Council's Highways and Cleansing services who oversee the tip


It's a shame you didn't PM me if have brought a transit Luton and  bolt cutters to cut the CCTV wires and cupboard padlocks . ..

[Sampanviking]

The story is BS.


The hard drive is not buried under twenty tons of soil.


Hard drives are stored in a sort of shed until they are taken for disposal. How do I know ? They've had about fifty of mine over the years, all with a neat hole drilled in the casing and 100ml or more of TEEPOL detergent squirted in (it attacks aluminium)


I really don't know because it would be a really amazing coincidence but a couple of years ago I loaded up the wagon with about twenty 486 DX66 chipset desktop carcases from our back shed and took them to this tip.


On my return I was less than impressed to hear NASA was offering top dollar for those very chips as they had gone out if production and they needed them for spares - something to do with some spacecraft relying on non airflow cooling so they could not use newer faster chips.


I estimated I had just kissed bye bye to about 20k USD before shipping costs.


But then I remembered while I was chucking my stuff in the skip there was a bloke getting VERY animated at the hard drive shed.


And I swear to god he didn't half look like this twonk

That annoying, I wish you had said earlier, I am just standing outside the house (the missus wont let me in) after reading the story on Wales online. I have just got home after spending all night digging up the tip....

[johnofgwent]

I've binned a few redundant pc's over the years,I was always told you can't wipe a hard drive with any success they can always harvest info and so you should drill holes through the disk to preserve your privacy and so always did.

I have a team ....


Seriously, that won't entirely fix it although it does make it awkward


Years ago I heard RSRE Malvern's boffins were up for a challenge. Lots of beer to anyone who could hand them a hard drive they could not get something off.


I took a drive, filled it with (legal) porn, drilled through the cover, and filled it with anionic detergent used for industrial laboratory glasswashing, which is hardly more powerful than some of the stuff you can buy off supermarket shelves these days...


I then left it for three weeks, and carried it in a bag to RSRE's front gate, and got an invite in


I handed over the bag, and the boffins poured out the metallic grey sludge that was all that remained of the aluminium platters that had been dissolved


I left the site with a six pack of Leffe Blonde. I felt taking more would be rubbing their noses in it.

[cromwell]

I've binned a few redundant pc's over the years,I was always told you can't wipe a hard drive with any success they can always harvest info and so you should drill holes through the disk to preserve your privacy and so always did.

[johnofgwent]

The story is BS.


The hard drive is not buried under twenty tons of soil.


Hard drives are stored in a sort of shed until they are taken for disposal. How do I know ? They've had about fifty of mine over the years, all with a neat hole drilled in the casing and 100ml or more of TEEPOL detergent squirted in (it attacks aluminium)


I really don't know because it would be a really amazing coincidence but a couple of years ago I loaded up the wagon with about twenty 486 DX66 chipset desktop carcases from our back shed and took them to this tip.


On my return I was less than impressed to hear NASA was offering top dollar for those very chips as they had gone out if production and they needed them for spares - something to do with some spacecraft relying on non airflow cooling so they could not use newer faster chips.


I estimated I had just kissed bye bye to about 20k USD before shipping costs.


But then I remembered while I was chucking my stuff in the skip there was a bloke getting VERY animated at the hard drive shed.


And I swear to god he didn't half look like this twonk

[patman post]

When covered in 2017, the story below reported an IT worker carelessly threw $80m-worth of Bitcoin away. Value has increased over the years each time the story resurfaced. The latest reference on LBC puts it at £250m.

[James Howels, a 35 year old] IT engineer, claims he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing £210m worth of bitcoin is appealing to his local council to help him find the missing device.
[Howells] said he disposed of what he thought was an empty hard drive in 2013 after having a clear out, only to subsequently realise he had discarded a device containing 7,500 bitcoin.
The panicked computer expert, from Newport, has pleaded with his city council multiple times over the years to allow him to dig up part of the landfill site where he believes the equipment could be languishing. Now he has offered Newport City Council 25 per cent of his possible fortune – around £52.5m – in exchange for letting him try to locate the buried treasure.

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/bitcoin-hard-drive-210-million-newport-city-council-landfill-james-howells-830874

https://www.systemtek.co.uk/tag/james-howells/

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/14/man-newport-council-50m-helps-find-bitcoins-landfill-james-howells

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/man-offering-welsh-council-74-13993161

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-value-james-howells-newport-landfill-hard-drive-campbell-simpson-laszlo-hanyecz-a8091371.html

Despite Bitcoin value rocketing over the years, just how many times can a hard-luck story from Newport be aired and it's value inflated...?