Many people have a tale of a lost or broken hard drive containing some bit of precious data they wish they could recover.But perhaps no one on the planet has thrown out a hard drive as valuable as the one James Howells says is now buried in a landfill.According to an article in The Guardian today, Howells threw out the hard drive, "rescued from a defunct Dell laptop," this past summer."And then last Friday he realised that it held a digital wallet with 7,500 Bitcoins created for almost nothing in 2009," the story notes.Howells, an IT pro, says his mistake likely occurred in mid-July, at which time a single bitcoin was worth about $90.Today, the value of a single bitcoin passed $1,000 for the first time, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.According to The Guardian story, Howells did not have a backup.The drive he allegedly threw out "contains the cryptographic 'private key' that is needed to be able to access and spend the bitcoins; without it, the 'money' is lost forever."Howells says he mined the 7,500 bitcoins in 2009.

"Howells stopped mining after a week because his girlfriend complained that the laptop was getting too noisy and hot while it ran the programs to solve the complex mathematical problems needed to create new Bitcoins," The Guardian says.He later dismantled the laptop for parts after it broke, keeping the hard drive "in a desk drawer for the next three years—until that fateful summer day when he had the clearout."The hard drive itself is believed to be in a landfill near Newport, Wales."He even went down to the landfill site itself," The Guardian writes."'I had a word with one of the guys down there, explained the situation.And he actually took me out in his truck to where the landfill site is, the current ditch they're working on.It's about the size of a football field, and he said something from three or four months ago would be about three or four feet down.'"Howells realizes the chances of recovering his bitcoins are, sadly, not good."I'm at the point where it's either laugh about it or cry about it," he said.

UPDATE: Some readers have questioned whether it would have been possible to mine 7,500 bitcoins in a week, even in 2009 when Bitcoin had just been introduced.We've e-mailed Howells, and he replied, "I assure you, it's genuine."He doesn't have proof of the bitcoin mining, but said, "I stumbled upon it back in February 2009, set it all up, mined for about a week and then stopped."litecoin free cloud miningFebruary 2009 was just one month after Bitcoin was introduced to the world.bitcoin kaufen mastercardThe story of Howells' bitcoin loss spread without his intending it to.litecoin chinese"I didn't ask for all this attention, I simply asked a question in an IRC chat room last night, then answered a few questions that the guys asked me, and all of a sudden this madness," he said.how many bitcoin nodes exist

James Howells of Wales is one of the Bitcoin community’s most tragic figures.Last June, Howells inadvertently tossed a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins, which he had mined back when they were worth very little.Now that a bitcoin is worth somewhere around $1000, that drive has an estimated worth of $7.5 million.But unfortunately for Howells, an IT worker, city workers say it’s too late for him to recover the drive from the dump.bitcoin set up solo miningThe sum at stake in Howells’ case brought him lots of attention, but he’s certainly not the only person to lose track of his bitcoins.litecoin virtual walletOutside of anecdotal evidence, however, there’s really no way of knowing how many people have similar tales—or how much they’ve lost.bitcoin kurs 30 tage

See also: Bitcoin Black Friday Aims To Get People To Actually Spend Their BitcoinsAccording to the founder of Bitcoin Black Friday, only 78% of bitcoins in existence were being circulated in 2012.Since it’s impossible to tell whether dormant coins are lost or simply being saved, the holiday aimed to get hoarded bitcoins back in circulation.Researchers found that a full 64% of bitcoins have never been spent; the question is whether they still can be.bitcoin charts difficultyUnspent Coins And The Bitcoin EconomyAccording to Greg Schvey, a Bitcoin researcher, it’s hard to distinguish lost bitcoins from those people are just saving for a rainy day.bitcoin rejestracjaThere is, however, one big clue.It starts with the block chain, a public ledger that includes every transaction ever made within the currency.When miners verify new transactions, what they’re really doing is appending new blocks onto the block chain.

“Each address has ownership of a certain number of coins,” Schvey said.“As long as we see any amount of coin come out of that address, we know that since the same person has access to all the bitcoins at that address, they’re not lost.”Schvey cofounded The Genesis Block, a company that analyzes the primary block in the block chain, a.k.a.Since each block contains a hash—a cryptographic string of data—from the previous block, and the genesis block is guaranteed to always be the initial block, each bitcoin is guaranteed to trace back to it.The genesis block is arguably the most useful innovation in the Bitcoin currency because it eliminates the chance of double-spent or counterfeit bitcoins.When every legitimate bitcoin can be identified thanks to its genesis block hash, it’s impossible to create fakes.And for Schvey, this means the genesis block gives him the data to track every bitcoin that currently exists today.According to his company’s research, 55% of bitcoins that have been issued to date were active in the third quarter of 2013; 10% of bitcoins haven’t been active since 2012.

And a substantial 35% haven’t been spent since 2011.It’s this third number that is most likely to consist of lost coins, though they could just be being hoarded.“The way this community grew up, this was all run on forums and consisted of enthusiasts checking things out, so if you lost 1000 BTC, it was of no value or very little,” Schvey said.“Now that’s worth millions, but at the time there just may not have been as secure practices as we have today.I imagine a fair amount of early adopters just made mistakes.”Since only a finite number of bitcoins will ever be mined, Bitcoin is a deflationary currency.Once miners unearth 21 million coins, that’s the total number of bitcoins that could possibly ever exist.But thanks to lost and forgotten wallets, the number will likely be far lower than that.See also: What The Bitcoin Bubble Really Says About The CryptocurrencySchvey said the finite number of bitcoins will result in rising prices, and consequently, people who have their bitcoins in savings will start to take them out.

“As they cash out, we’ll see it on the block chain first,” Schvey said.If the supply rises, that could potentially impact Bitcoin’s total valuation.But if not, we can assume a lot of those coins are lost.” Whether due to irrecoverable passwords, forgotten wallets from when Bitcoin was worth little, or the death of the bitcoin owner, it’s safe to say there are lots of people besides Howells who’ve lost their bitcoins.The question is whether or not those coins are lost for good.“It’s extremely improbable, and effectively impossible [to recover lost coins],” said Schvey.“This is what the security of Bitcoin is actually based on.If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it.”Not everyone is so skeptical.As the price of Bitcoin continues to surge and the demand for cracking long-forgotten rises, services are popping up to assist people in recovering their wallets.But even these options are limited.Wallet Recovery Services stresses that recovery is impossible if you don’t remember an inkling of your password.

But, “if you were pretty sure that your passphrase contained words from a sentence from ‘The Return of the King’, but you’ve forgotten which page, then we can help.”There are also tutorials for recovering your bitcoins in the aftermath of a technical difficulty, like if the hard drive you had them on broke down.But unfortunately for people like Howells, tutorials like this one require you to actually be able to locate the drive where the bitcoins are stored.Not to mention, success stories are rare and exuberantly celebrated.The silver lining is, now that Bitcoins are worth a pretty penny, users and Bitcoin wallet services alike have seriously upped their game.Coinbase, a wallet designed for new adopters, even has a password recovery resource, something unheard of in earlier services.Armory has a more elaborate system where the user prints out multiple pages each containing unique cryptographic hashes.CEO Alan Reiner explains:You put one in your house, one in your safety deposit box, and give another to a family member to keep at their house.