IT worker James Howells removed the disk, which held a digital store of 7,500 bitcoins, between June and August in 2013. Originally, he had mined the virtual currency four years earlier when it was of little value.
But when the cryptocurrency shot up in value and he started looking for it, he found that he had accidentally thrown the hard drive away with the trash.
With his lost bitcoin soaring even further, Howells has approached the Newport City Council in Wales to ask for permission to dig a specific section of the landfill where he believes the hard drive ended up.
In return, he has offered to pay the municipality a quarter of the current value of the treasure, which he believes can be shared among the local residents.
The digital currency was created in 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoins are essentially computer files stored in a “digital wallet” on your device. They can then be used as payment, with each transaction recorded in a public list known as blockchain.
The price of bitcoin hit an all-time high in recent days and is now trading around $ 37,000.
Howells first discovered that the hard drive was missing when his bitcoin was worth about $ 9 million. Based on current rates, he estimates it would be worth about $ 273 million.
He told CNN: “I offered to donate 25% or £ 52.5 million ($ 71.7 million) to the city of Newport to distribute to all local residents living in Newport, should I find the bitcoins and get it back. . “
“This would work out to about £ 175 ($ 239) per person for the entire city (316,000 residents). Unfortunately, they declined the offer and will not even discuss the matter with me personally.”
After discovering the error, Howells went to the dump to find out where the hard drive might have ended up. He told CNN at the time, “As soon as I saw the site, I thought you had no chance. The area covered is huge.”
However, he now believes he knows how to get it back.
“The plan would be to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a reference system and restore the hard drive while adhering to all safety and environmental standards,” he told CNN on Friday. “The drive would then be offered to data recovery specialists, who could rebuild the drive from scratch with new parts and try to recover the little bit of data I need to access the bitcoins.”
“The value of the hard drive is over £ 200 million (about $ 273 million) and I’m happy to be able to share some of that with the folks at Newport if I get the chance to look for it. About 50% would go for it. are investors who put in the capital to finance the project, and I would have the remaining 25% left, ”he added.
A Newport City Council spokeswoman told CNN that the local government “has been contacted a number of times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware that is said to contain bitcoins.”
In a statement to CNN, the spokeswoman said the council had not turned down the offer, but it was not allowed to excavate the site.
She said: “The council has told Mr. Howells a number of times that excavation is not possible under our permit permit and that excavation itself would have a massive environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste can be as much as millions of pounds – without any assurance that it will be found or that it is still in good working order.”