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.drug enforcement officials removed a long-standing thorn in their side Wednesday, as the FBI seized the notorious Silk Road trading site and filed charges against Ross William Ulbricht.

The government claims Ulbricht has steered the site as the eloquent “Dread Pirate Roberts” since January 2011.The Silk Road functioned as a sort of Ebay for drugs and other oft-illegal merchandise, serving as an anonymous marketplace connecting buyers with sellers, complete with an escrow system to reduce transactional risk.bitcoin rbi newsAuthorities have been trying to shut down the Silk Road for years, but, until now, it proved a frustratingly difficult gnat to swat.bitcoin peak worthThe site cloaked itself deep in the Darknet, the hidden, anonymous underbelly of the Web, and was only reachable when using the anonymizing Tor software and network.ethereum packageThe site also relied on Bitcoins to allow buyers and sellers to swap cash without revealing their identity.trade bitcoin 24/7

The Silk Road currently prompts you to log in with your user ID before tossing up the seizure notification.Security researcher Brian Krebs has posted a PDF of the charges against Ulbricht, which include narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.Under the narcotics conspiracy charges, the FBI also claims that in May 2013, Ulbricht attempted to pay a Silk Road user to murder another member who was “threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site.” The Guardian reports that Ulbricht has been arrested in San Francisco.litecoin mining software downloadHe allegedly had more than 26,000 Bitcoins in his virtual wallet—a stash worth more than $3.6 million.bitcoin json api listAnd that's just the tip of the iceberg: The FBI claims that since its inception, the Silk Road had more than 9.5 million Bitcoins worth of sales revenue, totalling roughly $1.2 billion.bitcoin news rbi

Yes, that's "billion" with a "b," and all those sales allegedly generated 600,00 Bitcoins (totalling roughly $80 million) for Silk Road itself.The market price of Bitcoins took a massive nosedive after the government announced the Silk Road takedown.In mere moments, the trading price of a Bitcoin dropped from an average selling price of around $140 earlier today all the way down to a low of roughly $110 after news broke, according to Clark Moody.bitcoin difficulty levelsAverage selling prices have since been hovering around the $120 range.ethereum buy netherlandsWould-be drug buyers are finding their online options rapidly evaporating.Late last month, Silk Road rival Atlantis abruptly shut its doors, allegedly spiriting with its users’ Bitcoins.Beyond drugs, the sanctity of Tor’s “Onionland” Darknet itself has been under siege recently.

In August, FBI agents seized the servers of Freedom Hosting, which housed many of the more popular “Hidden Services” websites that comprise Onionland.At the same time, many Tor websites were compromised by a Javascript vulnerability that sent the distinct MAC address of users’ computers to a remote server allegedly belonging to federal authorities.Update: Silk Road allegedly did 9.5 million Bitcoins worth of business.The original version erroneously said "9.5 billion."Also added information about the Bitcoin price drop.To comment on this article and other PCWorld content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsTwins The Winklevii are back, and this time they're not talking about Facebook.Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss -- the Harvard twins who have argued for years that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them -- this week told the New York Times that they had massive holdings, at one point valued at $11 million, in virtual currency Bitcoin.The public backing by two widely recognized players in the tech world, combined with Bitcoin's soaring -- and now crashing -- value, has forced the secretive digital money into the spotlight.Bitcoin is known as the world's first decentralized digital currency and was created four years ago by someone (or possibly more than one person) known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Owners can buy and sell the currency, transfer it to others via the Internet and use it to buy digital and physical goods (although that is still in the early stages).Bitcoin has been of particular interest this month as the dollar value of the virtual currency skyrocketed from $25 just two months ago to $266 on Wednesday.But since then, Bitcoin's value has plummeted as the bubble burst for the highly speculative currency.The coins were trading for as low as $54.25 on Friday, meaning the Winklevii have taken a huge hit on their investment.Then again, when the twins first bought into Bitcoin last summer, the dollar value of the digital currency was in the single digits.And, with their multimillion-dollar settlement with Facebook, they can certainly afford some ups and downs in the market.ALSO:Facebook IPO: Winklevoss twins could reap big paydayReview: Facebook Home a nice fit for social butterflies [Video]Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launches lobbying vehicle Fwd.us Seizure Led to FloJo's DeathHis 104 scores make his caseRestaurant review: South Beverly GrillBrutal Murder by Teen-Age Girls Adds to Britons' ShockComaneci Confirms Suicide Attempt, Magazine Says