James Howells, a British IT expert, accidentally dropped his hard drive containing a password to access and spend his 7.500 bitcoins, which are now worth hundreds of millions.

The hard drive ended up in a landfill in Newport, the size of a football field, and Howells became popular in the media as he spent years trying to find his fortune. Even today, when bitcoin loses only a little value, it does not lose hope.

Today, this thirty-five-year-old could be richer than the Queen of England. As he once explained, he had two identical hard drives for laptops, but one of them contained the "private key" needed to access and spend his bitcoins.

Although he thinks his drive is already damaged and rusty, he hopes to find it.

"There is a good chance the plate inside the disc is still intact," he said. "Data recovery specialists could then recreate the disk or read the data directly from the board."

Howells claims that the disk contained 7.500 bitcoins, which today are worth more than 280 million dollars.

To download the hard drive, he needs permission from the local council to search the landfill. But they never gave it to him. He also offered to donate 25 per cent of his money to the City Fund, which is fighting Kovid. He also promised to fund the entire excavation project.

There are many tragic stories of people forgetting passwords or losing computers. Others complain that they sold their coins prematurely. The system is difficult to hack, censor or dismantle. That is why Howells can not access his coins in any other way.

It all started in 2010 when he accidentally spilled lemonade on his laptop and disassembled it into pieces. He threw away some parts, sold some, and put the hard drive in a drawer until that fateful summer day when he threw away the old things.

It is estimated that $ 140 billion is locked in bitcoins worldwide (of which $ 18,5 million) because their owners forgot their password.

Bitcoin is rapidly losing value, reaching a level of $ 30.000

Bitcoin fell by about 7,0 percent today, falling to its lowest level since July 2021, as investors began to sell risky assets en masse due to, as reported by Reuters, fears of a possible Russian attack on Ukraine.

The world's largest cryptocurrency, according to the latest available data, traded down 6,8 percent to $ 33.820.

Compared to November last year, when it reached an all-time high of $ 69.000, bitcoin lost a total of more than 50 percent of its value.