UK man offers ￡50 million COVID-19 relief funds to search dump for bitcoin bounty

James Howells in Welsh offered on Jan. 15 a GBP 50 million-worth COVID-19 relief fund out of a hard drive he had dumped in 2013 that he said contains a bitcoin now worth GBP 210 million. Gettyimagesbank

A Welshman was on Friday offering local officials a GBP 50 million coronavirus relief fund if they let him search a landfill for a hard drive containing bitcoin worth GBP 210 million which he dumped in 2013.

James Howells had 7,500 units of the virtual currency on his laptop hard drive, which had been gathering dust in an office drawer after he spilled a drink on the device.

He threw the drive away during an office clearout in 2013, having forgotten that the bitcoin he acquired for a paltry sum four years earlier were still on the memory device.

Newport Council, in south Wales, has repeatedly rejected Howell's requests to be able to search the landfill, despite his offer of a cut of the bounty.

"In 2017 the value of my hard drive was approximately GBP 125 million ($171 million, 141 million euros), at which point I made them another offer of 10 percent and unfortunately that offer was refused," Howells told BBC Radio 5 Live.

The value of bitcoin has since shot up even further.

He is now willing to donate 25 percent of the value of the buried treasure to his home city for a "Covid relief fund" if he finds the hard drive.

"Imagine how great it would be to say 'I've given everyone in the city a few hundred pounds'," he told the BBC.

The council told the broadcaster its licensing laws bars any excavation.

"The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order," said a council spokeswoman.

Howells believes the search would "not be as hard as you might think" as a professional team would be able to hone in on the likely spot because he knows exactly when he threw it away. (AFP)

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