So I was reading the latest steps in Welshman James Howells bitcoin saga, who’s name is legendary in bitcoin as the man who accidentally threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin wallet on it in 2013 with 7,500 btc stored inside it (that just last month was worth a theoretical $0.5Bn).
www.newyorker.com
Upshot of the latest is that Howells is still pleading for Newport City Council to dig up the area where his drive was probably dumped 8 years ago, offering the council 25% of the wallets value if they did so.
Question I have for anyone who understand hard drive mechanics and forensics is: even if they located the drive then how possible is it that an 8 year old spinning platter drive would be readable after 8 years sitting in a dump, buried along with ~40 tones of other literal crap?
At the very least I’d have thought that it could be damaged from the weight of subsequent rubbish on top, and by moisture incursion of all manner of nasty liquids.
It would seem to me that it’s an almost given that after all that, the drive would need to be forensically recovered and even then surely one single error of one single bit would be enough to prevent the encrypted wallet from being decrypted?
I don’t know the answers myself, these are just my assumptions - interested if anyone out there has any feedback on the situation.
If my assumptions hold true, I can see exactly why Newport City Council wouldn’t be interested in such a venture - given that it would seem to me to be one humongous gamble with almost zero chance of payoff.
Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump
For years, a Welshman who threw away the key to his cybercurrency stash has been fighting to excavate the local landfill.
Upshot of the latest is that Howells is still pleading for Newport City Council to dig up the area where his drive was probably dumped 8 years ago, offering the council 25% of the wallets value if they did so.
Question I have for anyone who understand hard drive mechanics and forensics is: even if they located the drive then how possible is it that an 8 year old spinning platter drive would be readable after 8 years sitting in a dump, buried along with ~40 tones of other literal crap?
At the very least I’d have thought that it could be damaged from the weight of subsequent rubbish on top, and by moisture incursion of all manner of nasty liquids.
It would seem to me that it’s an almost given that after all that, the drive would need to be forensically recovered and even then surely one single error of one single bit would be enough to prevent the encrypted wallet from being decrypted?
I don’t know the answers myself, these are just my assumptions - interested if anyone out there has any feedback on the situation.
If my assumptions hold true, I can see exactly why Newport City Council wouldn’t be interested in such a venture - given that it would seem to me to be one humongous gamble with almost zero chance of payoff.