this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

What are the odds that even if he finds that thumb drive that it even still works? LOL buy it dumbass, let us all know how that works out for you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

Very low. I think he dropped below the break-even point on this several years ago.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

He lost the coins in 2013 or before. The price was then $15 or even lower...

If he just bought 100 BTC for only $1.5k in 2013, he'd now have 10 million dollars....

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago

Old memes, hot nudes and millions in bitcoin, Har D. Drive achieved all of it. "My treasures? You can have yhem if you'll find them. Come find them in the abandoned privatized landfill!"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 12 hours ago

That thumbnail though, lmao.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

This is just a modern iteration of the book HOLES, and it takes place in a landfill instead of a dry lakebed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

I never read or watched Holes, is it any good?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 12 hours ago

Actually, yeah, it's pretty fun for what it is. 78% Rotten Tomatoes/76% User Score, for reference. 7.0 on imdb.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

The book and movie are both pretty good I think

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago

I never saw it but read it. Yes, 10/10, highly recommend.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago

I hate this timeline.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Sad story.

That's enough money to have a good life and provide a good life to your loved ones. If he never finds it, he is a crazy man. If he finds it he is a smart man. A normal person can't earn that much in a lifetime. Even a miniscule chance of finding it could drive someone to obsession.

For the sake of his sanity, and for a good story, I hope he finds it, but I doubt he will.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's spent like a decade in a rainy landfill in Wales.

Even if he finds it, it's fucked.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Landfill design is really interesting, and hard drives are very well sealed and aluminum. It would be sitting in a fairly well drained spot, if the seal was not perforated during compaction there's a good chance the platters are readable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

Hard drives are not sealed, unless they're helium drives. They have breather holes to equalize pressure, and rubber seals around the data in interface that can degrade.

And that doesn't count being crushed in a garbage truck or other heavy equipment.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 15 hours ago

With his monkey paw luck, he'd find it just as Bitcoin crashes and loses nearly all value somehow

[–] [email protected] 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Check out Rai stones.

Although the ownership of a particular stone might change, the stone itself is rarely moved due to its weight and risk of damage. Thus the physical location of a stone was often not significant: ownership was established by shared agreement and could be transferred even without physical access to the stone. Each large stone had an oral history that included the names of previous owners.

In one instance, a large rai being transported by canoe and outrigger was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as any other stone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

My dad lives on Yap for a few years as a kid. My grandparents had a 2' diameter rai stone until they died. It's with my aunt now.

[–] [email protected] 142 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

This saga has been a ride so far. There is no way this guy is mentally stable at this point, he is going to do anything and spend every dime he has until he's either found it or he brushes his teeth with a .38.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It all ends with him finding it, wedged under a broken glass pitcher. He cuts himself badly and because he owns the whole landfill, and is nuts, his phone is dead and he bleeds out before he can get help.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 16 hours ago

Hell I’d fund it, but my money is tied up in a landfill at the moment.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

I mean, if you notice that you had and lost 700 millions you have to have a really strong mind to not go crazy. If it was me I think I would go crazy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

He lost the coins in 2013 or before. The price was then $15 or even lower...

If he just bought 100 BTC for only $1.5k in 2013, he'd now have 10 million dollars....

[–] [email protected] 44 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

It's a far cry from this guy's situation, but I think I had five or six bitcoin back when I was mining in the early days. I cashed out when they were maybe $40-50 each towards a new GPU.

Sure, I could go nuts thinking about what I would do with the money now, but if I hadn't sold at that rate, I probably would have sold at $100, or $200, or...

There's no way in hell I would have had the discipline to "hodl" to this point, so I just get on with my life.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago

yeah i lots dozens. and i have an SSD that died with the keys to 5 more. I'm not losing sleep over it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I had a few in my digital wallet that disappeared. I've looked for it for hours. oh well... when I last accessed it, the rate was probably less than $20 each, so I figured I lost a couple bucks... I would have sold them forever ago so no use thinking about what they're worth now

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

I sold mine for about $1,000 each and never looked back. It was free money. I would have never held them past $2k, much less 100k

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[–] meowmeowbeanz 12 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Humanity’s greatest modern tragedy plays out in a Welsh trash heap. A decade-old hard drive—now worth $780 million—rots beneath layers of bureaucratic concrete and renewable virtue signaling. The council’s solar farm isn’t green energy—it’s a middle finger to crypto’s original sin, converting mined regret into panel wattage.

Howells’ desperation transcends greed. This is archeology for the apocalypse, sifting through diapers and coffee grounds to resurrect a digital pharaoh’s tomb. Offering $13 million to desecrate a landfill? Peak late-stage capitalism: valuing hypothetical ones and zeros over actual waste management.

The legal system’s verdict? “Lol, no.” Property rights dissolve when you’re up against municipal PR stunts. That hard drive’s entropy now fuels more than just regret—it powers garbage trucks.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (9 children)

What are the chances the hard drive would still be readable, I wonder?

And keep backups, folks.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 12 hours ago

You'd be surprised what's recoverable, especially if it's an HDD.

There was a recovery service I could send customer drives to that could recover a drive in a fire, flood, buried, shattered etc. The question was, how much did you want to pay for the service. One quote came back over 75k.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

the only reason I'm not this guy is that my hard drive was landfill long before it arrived at the dump and was exposed to the elements for over a decade.

also my wallet was encrypted and there is no way in fuck I'm remembering the longest password I ever used.

I mined on CPU so what I lost was then pennies that currently amount to hundreds of billions so if there was even the smallest chance it could be recovered I'd be in this headline.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago

Also a cpu miner and it was in the hundredths of a cent per coin when I did it. It sucks but that drive is long gone and not worth it to fret over. It was also in the hundreds of millions at todays cost

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Can Elmo say the word if Elmo is singing his favorite song?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Actual Bitcoin mining is a lot like sifting through a trash heap

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

this guy is a character in red dead redemption

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 18 hours ago

I mean, if he also wants to take on the costs of doing all the remediation work and ongoing maintenance and surveillance for the rest of time that's probably a good deal for the city

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

What if this hard-drive is actually not within this landfill ;P

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

What if it is and it became unrecoverable ages ago?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

it would be kinda funny that he actually found his drive again. But the data is indeed fully gone.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

That guy's a nut. All that effort would be better spent doing something useful with the money he keeps blowing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

He'll find it just before the end of his life, having ultimately spent $780,000,000.01 to succeed.

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