[dbspin]

My heart genuinely goes out to him. Not merely for losing the bitcoin. The idea of trying to negotiate a search (or purchase) of the dump with the risk avoidant jobsworth council bureaucrats of a mid sized British town is spine chilling.

[debeloo]

Exactly. Even if he buys it, there's no guarantee he'll permission to dig it up.

[throwaway314155]

How did he lose the damn keys? It's kinda hard to empathize with that when everyone knows what the consequences are to (i assume) accidentally throwing a fucking single copy of your keys into the trash.

[andelink]

From the article:

> The whole situation started in the summer of 2013, when Howells accidentally put a laptop that contained his Bitcoin wallet (with 7,500 Bitcoin) in a black bag in the hall of his house. His partner at the time assumed the bag was filled with trash and disposed of it.

[ktallett]

I completely understand their desire to not let it be dug up. Where does that stop? People accidentally throw things out all the time, it's sadly a part of life.

[npoc]

Not many people offer them 10s or 100s of millions of pounds to do it.

[ktallett]

He doesn't have that amount of money right now. He may never have it. They are taking a massive risk at a great expense to themselves. He may never find the hard drive, it may be unreadable, his memory maybe incorrect and he doesn't have the key on there, and so on. The council would be taking a pointless risk.

[npoc]

There are people who will put up the money to the council in return for a large percentage of the money if it's recovered.