• Carmakazi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    140
    ·
    edit-2
    12 days ago

    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.

      • hansolo@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        34
        ·
        12 days ago

        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.

    • Coriza@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      12 days ago

      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.

      • scops@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        45
        ·
        12 days ago

        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.

        • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          12 days ago

          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

        • jdeath@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          12 days 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

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          12 days ago

          Yeah, but if those Bitcoin were “out there somewhere”, and you’d never have to think about money ever again if you found them…

      • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        12 days 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…

  • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    12 days ago

    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.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      12 days ago

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

      Even if he finds it, it’s fucked.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      12 days ago

      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.

    • Karjalan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 days ago

      Enough money? It’s three quarters of a billion… That’s an unreasonably large amount.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    12 days ago

    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.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      12 days ago

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

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            11 days ago

            Yeah but theres no way of knowing if its viable or not at this point, so the only known factor is the value of BTC and the cost of money spent searching for the drive. Even if it fails break even (cost > value) that changes over time.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      11 days ago

      Was it a thumb drive? I thought it was a hard drive. Might even still be attached to the motherboard in a desktop.

      • FireWire400@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        11 days ago

        If it’s a traditional hard drive with moving parts the chances of it still working are zero. Data recovery maybe possible if the platters are still somewhat intact but I doubt he’d even find it to begin with.

        • Etterra@discuss.online
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 days ago

          It’ll likely be ruined either way. Municipal waste is a mix of solids and liquids that gets crushed, shoved, and tumbled around before being compacted down by heavy treads and buried in layers. Anything electronic is likely to be damaged in all that.

  • meowmeowbeanz@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    12 days ago

    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.

      • meowmeowbeanz@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        12 days ago

        Oh, you’re right—forgot the /s. Clearly, a $780 million treasure buried under bureaucratic arrogance and greenwashing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a comedy! Who doesn’t love watching late-stage capitalism turn potential fortune into landfill fuel? Peak entertainment.

  • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    12 days 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…

    • shastaxc@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      11 days ago

      If my math is right then he would have had to have $117k in bitcoin at that time to have $780m now. That is a lot of money to lose even back then.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 days ago

      Yeah.

      I mean I didn’t buy $15 in bitcoin 15 years ago (have never bought any, never will), and I’m not obsessed about it.

      Is it really any different for this guy?

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    12 days 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

  • Gabbagen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    12 days 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!”

    • breadlover@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 days ago

      Now you have my attention. This dude could get lots of people to search for free in the promise they’d get some scraps. I know two homeless dudes on the corner that would do this

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    12 days ago

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