#mundocurioso Lost his private key and with it 7,500 bitcoins: his story is a drama

A fatal mistake in the trash

Howells, an IT specialist from Newport, Wales, mined those 7,500 bitcoins in 2009, when cryptocurrency was just taking off and few understood its potential. He stored his private key —the unique password that unlocks a digital wallet— on a hard drive that he kept alongside another empty one. In 2013, during a cleanup, his partner accidentally threw the wrong drive in the trash. The black bags ended up in a local landfill, and with them went his access to the bitcoins.

When Howells realized the disaster, it was already too late. The Newport landfill had received tons of waste, burying the drive under layers of garbage. At that moment, his bitcoins were worth about $7.5 million, a painful but imaginable loss. Today, with the price of Bitcoin skyrocketing, the magnitude of the mishap is astronomical, turning his story into a modern tragedy.