Welsh Man Builds Robot Dog To Help Him Find $169M BTC Hard Drive

A Welsh Man, James Howells built a robot dog to help him find a hard drive with $169 million worth of BTC in it but only if the Newport authorities approve his mission so let’s read more today in our Bitcoin latest news.

Back in 2013, James Howells, the Welsh Man from Newport, threw away his iPhone-sized hard drive with 8000 BTC. His possession is now worth about $169 million so he came up with an expensive plan to build a robot dog and use AI-powered machines.  The unfortunate story started in 2009 when he mined 8000 BTC and back then, the number of cryptocurrencies was only worth af ew cents so he did pay much attention to his stash. In 2013, he was cleaning u his desk and threw away a lot of items. Unlucky for him, he had two identical hard drives and one was empty. One was full with 8000 BTC. The latter ended up in a rubbish bag and now lays below 110,000 tons of garbage.

Howells spent the next nine years looking for permission from local authorities to dig for his hard drive but the Newport city council denied his request warning that the search could damage the environment and ruin the land. Desperate to find it, he presented an $11 million proposal to the authoriteis which includes the employment of robot dogs, AI-based machinery, and human labor that will expand the area in a way that will not harm the natural landscape.

According to his estimates, the search could take up to three years and the machines will have to dig up the garbage and prepare the landfill for exploration. The robot dogs will sweep the area until they spot the hard drive. Once the mission gets completed, the team will clean out the garbage:

“We do not want to damage the environment in any way. If anything, we want to leave everything in a better condition.”

However, authoriteis don’t seem open to this idea as one council representative said that the proposal poses huge ecological risks that are unacceptable. If Howell finds his hard drive it will likely be damaged from the years spent below tons of garbage but Howells estimated that if the platter is not broken, chances are that the device will work. He promised to give 30% of his holdings to the workers that will help him in the mission. Keeping the hard drive safe is not the only option that investors should take. They should also store their private keys in an appropriate place.

We’ve seen many cases like this one in the past, where people lost millions after losing access to their wallets or simply losing their wallets. One man from Germany had 7000 BTC locked away when he forgot his password and was not able to cash out his possessions.