# 7.5 Million in Bitcoins buried in landfill **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 10, 2013, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941 "2013-12-10T01:39:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/1 "2013-12-10T01:39:53Z")
> **[World News: Latest International Headlines, Video, and Breaking Stories From...](https://www.nbcnews.com/world)** > > Get the latest news, updates, and video from around the globe. > [@](#): > > LONDON – An IT worker threw out a computer hard drive without realizing it contained $7.5 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin. > > The device is now buried somewhere in a vast landfill site near the home of owner James Howells – who only realized his mistake when it was too late. > > "It is soul destroying to be honest,” Howells told NBC News on Thursday. “I haven’t had much sleep over the past few days. Every second of the day I am thinking about what could have been.” Ouch! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/2 "2013-12-10T03:25:55Z")
So _that’s_ what internet pirates do with their ill-gotten gains! I guess he should have made a treasure bitmap! ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/3 "2013-12-10T04:07:42Z")
‘404’ takes on a whole new meaning. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/4 "2013-12-10T04:09:16Z")
“The Bitcoins…are buried under…a…‘W’…” ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/5 "2013-12-10T04:58:08Z")
Now worth $3.5 million. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/6 "2013-12-10T13:38:32Z")
I love the way that everything that happens in Britain gets datelined “LONDON”. This guy doesn’t even live in England! ---
**Author:** ![milquetoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@milquetoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milquetoast)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/7 "2013-12-10T13:47:38Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I love the way that everything that happens in Britain gets datelined “LONDON”. This guy doesn’t even live in England! The dateline of an article usually refers to the place where the story was written or filed. It doesn’t necessarily refer to where events occurred. It’s possible that the author of this article didn’t even leave London to write the story. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/8 "2013-12-10T15:28:10Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I love the way that everything that happens in Britain gets datelined “LONDON”. This guy doesn’t even live in England! If there’s a part of Britain that isn’t London (and I’m a bit skeptical on that) then I don’t want to know about it. Yeah, eat my shit, all you (imaginary) people outside the M25. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/9 "2013-12-10T15:32:01Z")
If you’re going to stick it in a drawer, maybe that’s the sort of thing you might want to put a Post-It on… ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/10 "2013-12-10T15:35:05Z")
Possibly this weird notion of “data backup” is worth a look. ---
**Author:** ![Coriolanus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coriolanus/32/18769_2.png) [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/11 "2013-12-10T18:51:15Z")
If it were possible to make 7500 bitcoins in a week - on a 2009 laptop - everyone would be millionaires. A modern computer designed for the task would be lucky to make more than a few hundreths of 1 bitcoin per day. It’s beyond dubious that he had even 1 bitcoin in a week. > **[Bitcoin Profitability Calculator - BTC Mining Profit Calculator - Bitcoin...](http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/)** > > Nothing guaranteed, of course this is only a rough estimate! Do not enter commas, only dots for decimal separator. You can also calculate rented mining by setting “Power consumption” to 0 and “Cost of mining hardware” to the rent per time frame.... ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/12 "2013-12-10T19:59:51Z")
I thought that the algorithm was designed so that it gets gradually harder to mine the coins, so that it was much easier to do so in 2009. That might explain why he had so many of them. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/13 "2013-12-10T20:06:44Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#): > > “The Bitcoins…are buried under…a…‘W’…” It’s a wild world. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/14 "2013-12-10T20:10:38Z")
Or it’s a Madˆ5 World. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/15 "2013-12-10T20:13:44Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I thought that the algorithm was designed so that it gets gradually harder to mine the coins, so that it was much easier to do so in 2009. That might explain why he had so many of them. He’d still have to mine about 50 of them per hour, on a laptop. I can’t really see how that’s feasible, since it would mean those who were actively mining in 2009 would have millions of bitcoins. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/16 "2013-12-10T21:15:22Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > He’d still have to mine about 50 of them per hour, on a laptop. I can’t really see how that’s feasible, since it would mean those who were actively mining in 2009 would have millions of bitcoins. And there probably weren’t that many of them doing that. I never heard of bitcoins until 2011, during that first spike of media interest. It would be interesting to know the difficulty of mining the first few bitcoins. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/17 "2013-12-10T21:48:42Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > He’d still have to mine about 50 of them per hour, on a laptop. I can’t really see how that’s feasible, since it would mean those who were actively mining in 2009 would have millions of bitcoins. The first block of Bitcoins awarded to the first miner was a block rewarding 50 bitcoins. Now, I don’t know how long it took to mine a block back then at difficulty 0 - but it seems they were tiny little blocks, and they were being mined every few seconds (it looks to take several minutes these days). ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/18 "2013-12-10T21:54:36Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Possibly this weird notion of “data backup” is worth a look. Yeah. Plus, each time you make a copy, there’s another $7.5 million! ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/19 "2013-12-10T21:57:41Z")
There were probably very few people doing it at the time and most were probably like him. They were doing it out of idle curiosity and abandoned it for various reasons over time. There may be many people who are now regretting deleting files or tossing drives. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941/20 "2013-12-10T23:25:59Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > He’d still have to mine about 50 of them per hour, on a laptop. I can’t really see how that’s feasible, since it would mean those who were actively mining in 2009 would have millions of bitcoins. If anyone mining bitcoins back then didn’t spend them, then they might have a lot today. But who expected them to be worth a thousand dollars each back then? (It’s like a stock that’s increased tremendously in value over the years; you’d be a millionaire, if you bought early and never sold the shares.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/7-5-million-in-bitcoins-buried-in-landfill/675941.md?page=2)