A Bitcoin expert has revealed a man’s £569m cryptocurrency fortune, stored on a hard drive that was accidentally tossed into a tip, could still be recovered.
Heartbroken James Howells’ ‘key’ to unlocking his vast stash of 8,000 Bitcoin was thrown into a Welsh landfill by his ex-girlfriend, Halfina Eddy-Evans.
Howells had spent weeks mining his digital currency in 2009, loading his riches on to a hard drive before forgetting about it and allowing it to be binned.
Since then, his lost collection of Bitcoins has skyrocketed in value and is now estimated to be worth an eye-watering sum of more than half-a-billion pounds.
Mr Howell is now desperately fighting with his local council in Newport for the rights to search dig up the landfill fill site in a bid to find his hidden fortune.
And today, a finance specialist said there is a slim chance Mr Howell could recover his millions without his hard drive as long he has kept its ‘seed phrase’ – a series of random words used to regenerate the key that controls access to his Bitcoin wallet.
Haydn Jones, an accredited expert witness relating to digital assets, said: ‘If he has recorded the seed phrase somewhere physically, then that could be possible.
‘It’s very easy to do as long as he has the piece of paper with it. So, as long as he has that, he is quids in. If he doesn’t, it’s sayōnara.’
James Howells has vowed to take a council to court in his final bid to unearth the ‘key’ to a Bitcoin jackpot
That digital key is on a laptop hard drive he believes is currently buried somewhere in 110,000 tons of rubbish in a nearby landfill, now grassed over
But Mr Jones warned if Mr Howells did not have the seed phrase, then the chances of cracking into his digital wallet, without a working drive, would be nearly impossible.
‘There is no computably feasible way of cracking that private key. It’s computably infeasible to crack it – there’s not enough time in the universe to do that,’ he added.
Cyber investigator Paul Sibenik, who is a cryptocurrency Investigator, feared it was unlikely any ‘seed phrase’ had been created, which ruined the chances of ever recovering the lost fortune.
He said the only slim chance was by accessing electronic copies of the private keys on the computer, or the ‘wallet.dat’ file containing them.
‘There is no hope of guessing the private key – which people sometimes liken to an extremely strong password. So, if the hard drive cannot be found and accessed, the Bitcoin will remain inaccessible forever,’ he told MailOnline.
The comments came as Mr Howell’s ex-girlfriend opened up for the first time over how she triggered her old boyfriend’s cyber nightmare.
Halfina Eddy-Evans admitted taking the hard drive to the tip in Wales but claims she did so at his request.
Halfina said she took the hard drive containing the ‘key’ to the tip nine to 10 years ago. The couple have since split up.
Halfina Eddy-Evans told how she played a role in disposing of the computer hard drive which could unlock millions but it was done on his orders – and accidentally
James has launched a legal fight against Newport City Council to get his hard drive back
She said: ‘I hope he finds it, not that I want a penny of his money, but it will shut him up!’
In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, the mother of their two teenage sons admitted: ‘Yes, I threw away his rubbish, he asked me to.
‘The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away, saying ‘There’s a bag of rubbish here to be taken to the tip’.
‘I had no idea what was in it but I reluctantly dropped it off at the local tip on the way home from going on the school run.
‘I thought he should be running his errands, not me, but I did it to help out.
‘Losing it was not my fault.’
She added: ‘I’d love nothing more than him to find it. I’m sick and tired of hearing about it.’
Ms Eddy-Evans broke her silence after Mr Howells, 39, has vowed to take a council to court in his final bid to unearth the ‘key’ to a Bitcoin jackpot.
He is battling for the right to dig up a tip where he believes his lost and buried hard drive has been mistakenly trashed.
In a last bid to help unlock his fortune he is preparing to take Newport Council in Wales to court.
The ‘lost’ fortune at today’s prices makes his Bitcoin worth £569m and he has pledged to donate 10 per cent of proceeds back to the local area – enough to transform Newport into ‘Dubai or Las Vegas of the UK’.
Dr Richard Bateson, finance and cryptocurrency expert at Bateson Asset Management, said there was still a chance the bitcoin key could be recovered and that the council should cut a deal with Mr Howells.
‘If there was a pile of gold in that dump then the council would be rushing to dig it up,’ he said.
‘It may be that the drive cannot be found and no longer functions. But let’s say there is a 20 per cent chance the bitcoin file can be retrieved, that’s an expected value of over $100m for an upfront cost of a few hundred thousand to search.
‘The council should, if they are convinced his claim is genuine, cut a deal with the guy for say 50/50 of the profits if it is found and contribute to the search costs. If found it could buy a new school, hospital or sports centre for the local community.’
Mr Howells claims his partner at the time had chucked away his unwanted belongings, including computer equipment which contained a vital password.
The exasperated mother said: ‘It looks like he’s blaming me, but I don’t think he really is, not that we are even talking now’
Ms Eddy-Evans from Newport, Gwent, admitted: ‘Yes, I threw away his rubbish, he asked me to.
‘It was years ago, maybe nine-ten years, and it was accidentally thrown away.
‘But I hope he finds it, not that I want a penny of his money, but it will shut him up!’
He had acquired 8,000 coins after 10 weeks of experimenting with the new cryptocurrency craze.
At the time he did not realise their value, and he had to stop mining after complaints from his then partner, Hafina. He kept his laptop in their bedroom and, when it was running, the noise of its fan stopped her sleeping.
Soon afterwards James knocked a glass of lemonade over his laptop and despite efforts to clean it, it never worked properly again.
He sold the components for parts, keeping the hard drive and transferring all the photos and music on it to an Apple computer. The only thing he couldn’t copy across was the tiny file containing the passcode to his Bitcoins because it wasn’t compatible with Apple’s operating system.
He threw the hard drive into the kind-of junk drawer most of us have at home and forgot about it for the next three years, concentrating on work and family life — by then he and Hafina had two young sons.
The exasperated mother said: ‘It looks like he’s blaming me, but I don’t think he really is, not that we are even talking now.’
Recalling the time her then partner asked her to do a favour, she explained: ‘He said there were a few black sacks of rubbish to take to the tip, three or four, and he asked me to do it.
General view of the Newport recycling and waste tip where James Howells believes the hard drive contain the password to his crypto account is located
‘Reluctantly, I did it but had no idea what it contained, a hard drive linked to Bitcoin which then became a big thing, and has since gone through the roof!
‘Losing it was not my fault!’
‘At the time James had discarded the hard drive, throwing it away and thinking it was of no use.
‘But now he thinks it could be worth a fortune and he is still fighting the council. It has been going on a long time.’
She added: ‘I’d love more than anything for him to find it. I’m sick and tired of hearing about it!
‘Part of me thinks the council should let the tip site be dug up, it’s not helping his mental health with the thoughts of sitting in a fortune he can’t get.
‘But the other part thinks for him just to drop it and let it go.
‘People keep tagging me online, my friends and random people, with his comments about his loss of a fortune.
‘But I say ‘Don’t ask me about it!’.
‘I have no claim on whatever money he could be worth. He is the father of my two sons but I don’t want a penny of his money.’
The price of the Bitcoin recently hit a record high of $80,000 – a rise of more than 80pc this year and the highest on record since it was formed in 2009.
Newport recycling and waste tip. He claims his partner at the time had chucked away his unwanted belongings, including computer equipment which contained a vital password
But Mr Howells says all Bitcoin needs to do is hit the $157k mark and it would break through the billion pound barrier.
‘This problem is never going to go away. This is always going to be a treasure hunt,’ he told Fortune.
‘The treasure is getting more and more valuable by the day, and that isn’t going to stop.’
There is more than 1.4million tonnes of waste at the landfill, but Mr Howells says he won’t need to search it all as he has narrowed the hard drive’s location down to an area of 100,000 tonnes, reported the BBC.
But Newport city council has repeatedly refused to let him search the area as it ‘is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area’.
Mr Howells announced last month that he was suing the council for £495,314,800 in damages, accusing the local authority of ‘withholding my property without my consent’.
A first hearing on an application from the authority to get it thrown out is scheduled for early month, with a judge set to rule on December 3.
A spokesperson for Newport City Council said: ‘Newport City Council has been contacted multiple times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to be in our landfill site.
‘The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.
‘The council is the only body authorised to carry out operations on the site.
‘Mr Howells’s claim has no merit, and the council is vigorously resisting it.’
