Halfina Eddy-Evans, a United Kingdom-based resident, has revealed that she mistakenly lost the keys to her ex-boyfriend’s 8,000 BTC worth over $700 million while they were dating.
Her ex-boyfriend, James Howells, noted that he had mined the BTC himself since 2009 and had forgotten about it, storing the key in a flash drive, an offline storage device that his ex-girlfriend disposed of.
Over $700 Million in the Dump
According to a local UK news media, MailOnline, Eddy-Evans claims that Howells asked her to dispose of the flash drive, which she did by taking it to a refuse dump in Wales almost nine to ten years ago.
“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. 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,” she said in an interview.
She noted that she was only trying to help him run errands and never knew it would end in disaster. Remorsefully, Eddy-Evans said that she wanted Howells to find the flash drive so he could stop reminding her about it.
Howells in Search for Drive
Howells noted that he began searching for the secret keys to the 8,000 lost BTC held in the flash drive after learning that it was worth more than $700 million.
He has repeatedly asked the local government authorities for permission to search the landfill but has been denied. Thus, he’s willing to sue the Newport City Council as a last resort to obtain permission to search for and retrieve the key. He promised to donate 10% of the BTC to the local area if he recovers it.
“The treasure is getting more and more valuable by the day, and that isn’t going to stop,” he noted.
According to the BBC, the landfill has more than 1.4 million tonnes of waste, but Mr Howells says he won’t need to search it so much as he has narrowed the hard drive’s location down to an area of 100,000 tonnes.
Meanwhile, at the current BTC price of $98,020, the lost tokens are worth more than $784 million.
