The device is now buried under a mountain of garbage at a landfill site in Wales.It will be almost impossible to find.James Howells got rid of the drive, which holds a digital store of 7,500 bitcoins, between June and August this year.The IT worker mined the virtual currency four years ago when it was the exclusive domain of tech geeks.Back then bitcoin was worth very little.On Friday, the cryptocurrency broke through $1,200, making the missing hard drive worth around $9 million.Howells had been hanging onto it for several years before deciding to clean up his home.After discovering the mistake late last week, a "devastated" Howells began a frantic search through computer files and other drives for a backup.A trip to the garbage dump was the only option."As soon as I saw the site, I thought you've got no chance.The area covered is huge," he told CNN.A spokesperson for Newport City Council said an item thrown away in the summer months would now be buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste and earth.

The council, which operates the dump, said it has helped retrieve items in some circumstances "but this would have to be done very quickly after it was thrown away."Howells said he's had all sorts of suggestions emailed to him about how to get the drive back.But well-meaning individuals shouldn't bother heading to the tip on his behalf - it's closed to the public for safety reasons.Speculators have helped power bitcoin's dazzling rise this year.A growing number of businesses now accept bitcoins, including some Subway sandwich shops and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space travel venture, though critics claim it's unlikely to become a legitimate currency.The program behind bitcoin was created anonymously and introduced on the internet in 2010.Unlike traditional money, bitcoins are not managed by a central authority and exist only in cyberspace.-- CNN's Adam Dunnakey contributed to this report.Find the latest bookmaker offers available across all uk gambling sites - Bets.Zone - Betting Zone Use our complete list of trusted and reputable operators to see at a glance the best casino, poker, sport and bingo bonuses available online.

Join our Telegram Channel!Get Bitcoin News stories in Telegram × DismissPhones Laptops Cameras Tablets Headphones Smartwatches VR Headsets This is my NextTIL of a man named James Howells who threw away a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoin.The hard drive, currently under mountains of trash in a wales landfill is worth approximately $15 million.bitcoin build osxHAVING A BAD DAY?stampare bitcoinForget it, fool, as some chap in America has accidentally thrown away a hard drive with enough bitcoins on it to buy an extravagant car or a whole load of top-of-the-range Apple watches.asic bitcoin for saleReddit user 'me_is_idiot' told his sorry tale in a post on the site and elicited a lot of sympathy.valor bitcoin dollar

It is no wonder.What he did is a blunder that should give anyone a sinking feeling in the tummy department."This FU started around six years ago when I was a poor college student.I came across this thing called bitcoin, and people were giving them away for free on some websites," he said."Everything I read about them said they were going to be the next big thing.usc bitcoinAwesome, I'll get myself some of those.raspberry pi as bitcoin minerOver the course of one semester I'd got around 150 bitcoins, which at the time was worth around $11.ethereum stock nasdaqWhat a waste of fucking time!"bitcoin to hit 10000Eventually he forgot about the coins, and presumably stopped reading anything about the value and status of bitcoins.bitcointalk india

He left himself a note about the existence of the virtual money, but clearly had other things on his mind."These bitcoins were stored on my laptop.I upgraded my laptop the following semester with more RAM and a bigger superfast 7200 HDD.I wrote a little sarcastic note to myself about the bitcoins and folded it over my old HDD," he explained."That was the last time I paid any attention to bitcoin.It wasn't too long before I graduated and started to earn decent(ish) money."Fast forward to last month and I'm moving to a smaller apartment (more expensive area), and had to be picky about what I could take.I had an old box of PC parts.I had a quick look through and marvelled at the 256MB RAM sticks, the 40GB HDDs.I even had a few floppy disks!All of it worthless with today's hardware.So in the trash it all went."Later he found the old note and realised his mistake."I chuckled to myself for a split second before realising bitcoins are worth a fair bit today, at which point panic set in," he said.

The poor guy has been scratching his head and searching down the back of the armchair.But short of turning over a landfill site, he does not expect to be reunited with his thousands."I've been Googling for several hours but it seems I'm fucked.The bitcoins are gone!At least they weren't worth the millions that my idiotic self thought when I first found the note, but that's not much consolation," he added."TL;DR earned $11 worth of bitcoin, five years later threw them out when they were worth $67,000!"As Bitcoin hit $1,000 dollars on Wednesday morning, a lot of early adopters saw their Bitcoin, bought or mined for cheap years ago, turn into a high-return investment.And some forgot they bought Bitcoin years ago, only to realize they were suddenly rich.However, there are also those on the other side of the Bitcoin — so to speak — and British IT professional James Howells may be the unluckiest of them all.According to The Guardian, Howells mined 7,500 Bitcoin in 2009 and kept it in a hard drive until last summer, when he threw the drive away without realizing he was throwing away a fortune.

See also: These Startups Are Betting Everything on Bitcoin At the time, his Bitcoin stash was worth around $675,000.Now, it would be worth $7.5 million.Howells reportedly threw the hard drive in a landfill near Newport, Wales, that is the size of a soccer field, meaning it's now somewhere buried under at least four feet of garbage.Worst of all, he never backed it up.He says he won't go and look for the hard drive himself, because authorities told him it would be almost impossible to find; but he has set up a new Bitcoin wallet asking for donations that would go towards funding a recovery effort.@alexhern if anyone wants to donate to my Bitcoin recovery fund...15JHTg6g4zokAM23vJVcL8DbAAjA4BhsLH - not that I'm expecting anything :) — James Howells (@howelzy) November 27, 2013 It's hard to blame Howells, who simply forgot the treasure saved on the hard drive he stashed away after rescuing it from a ruined Dell laptop.But perhaps this will serve as yet another lesson on the value of backing up your data.