Man who lost Bitcoin fortune in Welsh tip explores purchase of entire landfill | Hacker News Reader

Man who lost Bitcoin fortune in Welsh tip explores purchase of entire landfill

theguardian.com

41 pointsn1b0m58 comments

This reminded me of a Romanian joke from the communist era.

A son corresponds with his elderly father, who writes that he'd like to dig up the garden and plant potatoes, but the ground is hard and he's old, and can't the son come and help?

The son writes back that under no circumstances should he dig up the garden, that's where the money is hidden. The very next day, the Securitate (Romanian Secret Police) comes and digs up the entire garden looking for money.

A few days later, the son sends another letter: "I believe the garden should have been dug up by now, so you can go ahead and plant the potatoes."

Nicely told by Circle Round in "Buried Treasure" https://www.wbur.org/circleround/2023/06/27/buried-treasure

The version I've heard, it was the Mafia and FBI.

I looked up how landfills work[0] since I’ve never considered how they are filled before. I always had a childlike mental image of the whole thing.

It seems like it wouldn’t be nearly as impossible to find as I was originally imagining given he would likely be given records indicating which “cell” was being used at the time in question.

Finding a company willing to remove the waste and sort it for him wouldn’t be cheap.

I have to wonder if all of his money would end up at risk in the future as well due to assuming all the post-closure monitoring requirements, liability related to potential contamination of groundwater, and simply not having years of collecting fees over the operational lifespan to offset the future costs.

0: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/e...

Wonder what information and physical security will be like around the site, as someone could potentially swoop in overnight and steal the hdd if it seems like they'd be getting close?

His bitcoin wallet is encrypted. As per XKCD, they'd need to hit him with a $5 wrench until he tells the password.

Good point.

That'd mean they could still blackmail or otherwise ransom it to him though.

ie "Give us $xxx or you'll never see the hdd" type of thing

So the hard drive has been in the landfill since 2013. Exposed to natural elements, chemicals from other trash, and mechanical damage from all the crushing. There's a good chance that the drive at this point is damaged beyond recovery.

Ah man, this guy.

After being shaken about, squished up with other garbage and then buried with god knows what for 12 years, I wouldn’t bet on being able to read a single byte from that old drive, even if it could be found.

It’s gone mate.

That exactly what I was going to say: what makes him think that a HDD bought in 2013 and buried in a landfill site since then will work when its plugged in?

Personally I have my doubts - as per Nursie: It's gone mate.

And... it's encrypted. Which complicates data recovery enormously.

Went to read a related article from 2021 and this stood out

“The New York Times reports that an estimated $140 billion worth of bitcoin is considered lost due to forgotten passwords.”

Very likely. I think I'm not the only guy who curiously ran the miner of this weird bitcoin that was mentioned in a forum, and lost the wallet due a HDD crash/reinstallation/etc. and lack of backups.

A few bitcoins didn't mean much then, they were little more than toys like monopoly money.

I kind of wonder how many BTC I had... Never got around to installing a GPU-accelerated miner back then (they were quite new) as I quickly stopped seeing the point (the more sensible alternative for donating computation was BOINC) and deleted the thing.

It'd be really funny if he found said hard drive, and then it was damaged and beyond recovery.

Why would that be funny?

Funny ironic, not funny haha.

That’s not irony tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tiIWIm8Ys

Alanis Morissette begs to differ

I believe she’s washed her Hands Clean of this matter.

Maybe "tragicomic" would be a better word.

That is exactly what has happened.

He didn’t find it tho?

Unless you mean that is what will happen.

I am fairly certain the hard drive is beyond repair. It has more than likely had water ingress by now.

What a waste. In the decade he's been flailing around over this, he could have attempted multiple businesses and likely become moderately rich and at the very least been of service. The only good outcome I see for him is giving up and finding peace. No other life on the other side of this in success or failure will be worthwhile. This is a modern cautionary tale.

> he could have attempted multiple businesses and likely become moderately rich and at the very least been of service

How do you know he didn't do any of this? It's not like he's been sifting through garbage this whole time.

He's trying to buy the landfill now.

If this guy does manage to locate and retrieve the bitcoins from the hard drive, that'll definitely be an epic story for a long time. :)

Might replace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

Heh, they could carve it in stone and leave it in the spot where the hard drive was. :)

Buying garbage to recover garbage money, that's funny. Maybe when all is said and done he can earn a modest income operating the dump.

He will also want the "mineral rights" so he can recycle as much of it as possible, but without also taking environmental responsibility. And well there's gonna be other goodies too.

Visiting the tip in many parts of the UK is such a postcode lottery, if he could improve the operation of the tip he actually would stand a decent chance of earning an income from it.

Atari dumped a bunch of cartridges in the landfill in my home town. They became valuable and a documentary was filmed while they dug them up. It was successful.... lots of youtube videos about it.

More info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/1bh17ks/the_in...

Surely the landfill employees would have recovered it and divvied it up if it was ever recoverable or even there.

How would they? Have you ever been to an actual landfill? They are absolutely enormous, with tonnes of refuse being added every day - it's impossible to recover anything from a landfill, not without a concentrated search effort. And landfill employees are busy doing their actual jobs.

I'm sure the dude that lost it, knows his addresses and can tell if his coins have moved or not. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't be still looking to recover it.

The bitcoin wallet is encrypted

I wish him luck in his purchase, but even if he does buy it I suspect he'll struggle to get planning permission for an open-cast bitcoin mine.

I do have to wonder whether he even thinks he has a chance any more, or if he's merely fulfilling the terms of the funding he's received.

I know nothing about this story. My hunch is that no one wants to be held liable for what could be found in the landfill. Chemicals, medical waste, bodies, etc. Maybe they know all this stuff is in there. It’s in no one’s best interest to let a third-party go digging around.

At which point does this move from obsession to mental illness?

still at it huh

Honestly I admire his determination

If it's the same guy, I think his wife left him because he was so focused on getting the hard drive.

Yet another example of the stupid, backwards incentives of bitcoin.

Is it a backwards incentive? If it was a suitcase of cash wouldn't the incentive and story be the same?

No, because a suitcase of cash would not be spiraling upward in "value" as scads of hucksters all jabbered to each other that "cash is the future", and "you're still early, get in now"

Luddite.

We need a cash/credit alternative, and it’s currently our best shot.

Bitcoin is so far now from being used as cash. It WAS our best shot.

Privacy regulations should not allow this to happen.

Why? Do you have an expectation of privacy for the things you put in your rubbish? It's a landfill not a secure data storage site.

There are laws about looking into people's trash. Typically it is only allowed for police investigations.

A long time ago iin DC the WashPost had a great story by taking Henry Kissinger's trash over a period of time and poring over it. The solution was the creation of private trash removal services.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/09/archives/notes-on-people-...:

A reporter on assignment for the weekly National Enquirer who had an extraordinary interest in Secretary of State Kissinger's trash was questioned for two‐and‐a‐half hours by Secret Servicemen and Washington policemen Monday night after he picked up five bags of the Kissinger garbage.

“Jay Gourley, a 37‐year‐old Washington‐based reporter, was allowed to keep the Kissinger refuse after he argued, successfully, that it was property abandoned on public land, according to an Enquirer spokesmen.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/21/archives/paper-says-kissi...:

“In an article published in this week's editions, the newspaper said documents retrieved by Mr. Gourley included the following:

¶Detailed work schedules for the agents on duty at Mr. Kissinger's home and the names of most of the agents assigned to him.

¶A memorandum that revealed that the Secret Service was testing a new code light signal system for all its limousines. ¶A handwritten note on the back of an activity report that gave the number and type of arms and ammunition carried in each Secret Service limousine.

¶A handwritten note presumably written by an agent indicating that a shotgun had been left behind on Mr. Kissinger's trip to the Virgin Islands last month.”

https://www.gettyimages.ca/search/2/image?family=editorial&p...: photos of him returning the garbage.

But if you own the landfill does it not mean you own everything in there as well? So you could riffle through it for say recycling however much you want.

Ofc, keeping in mind copy rights and privacy rights with publication. But technically you could collect all papers, pictures and so on for recycling or burning for energy.

> But if you own the landfill does it not mean you own everything in there as well?

What I'm saying is that there are laws about that.

People throw away sensitive stuff, ranging from letters, documents, photos to used condoms. Do you suggest we allow individuals and companies to buy this stuff and collect the information without any laws?

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/p1pi5n/gmen/

This varies greatly by jurisdiction.

And it's also important to understand that laws only stipulate penalties for performing an act, a disincentive if you will. You can still do it if you're fine with the consequences; ink on paper can't stop someone from rifling through your garbage right here right now.

Anyone who cares to secure the privacy of his refuse should see to its thorough and irreversible destruction prior to disposal.

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