Bitcoin discussion and news

[Athos]

I know that, but there's a whole spectrum of wealth that exists between billionaires and ordinary schmoes. My impression was that the crypto hoarders were largely rich hustler types who may well be trying to become billionaires, but haven't done so yet.

I think anyone who holds a significant proportion of all the extant bitcoins at this point is nearer the billionaire than the ordinary schmoe.

 

[ddraig]

Ouch

Bitcoin: Newport man's plea to find £210m hard drive in tip

James Howells threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin - now worth £210m - by mistake in 2013.

www.bbc.co.uk

Mr Howells said he wants to meet with the council to discuss what he said would be a "win-win-win" situation for him, the council and the city.
But a spokeswoman for the council said: "Newport City Council has been contacted a number of times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to contain bitcoins.

"The first time was several months after Mr Howells first realised the hardware was missing.
"The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.

"The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds - without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order."

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Ouch

Bitcoin: Newport man's plea to find £210m hard drive in tip

James Howells threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin - now worth £210m - by mistake in 2013.

www.bbc.co.uk

Hahahaha

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

 

[not-bono-ever]

Ouch

Bitcoin: Newport man's plea to find £210m hard drive in tip

James Howells threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin - now worth £210m - by mistake in 2013.

www.bbc.co.uk

.


Let it go mate, just let it go

 

[cybershot]

Hasn't he already tried looking once before or do the Welsh have form for this.

 

[ddraig]

Hasn't he already tried looking once before or do the Welsh have form for this.

"have form" ??

Yes he asked in 2013 and they even took him out on the tip to show him that it would be somewhere 4+ ft deep in an area size of football field
And that the police would have a team of 15+ people, ppe and diggers for a smaller area

e2a - "only" worth £4million in 2013

Rubbish tip quest for £4m hard drive

A Newport man has visited a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

What kind of absolute muppet would think a hard-drive might even function after being buried in landfill for over 7 years?

 

[cyril_smear]

Hasn't he already tried looking once before or do the Welsh have form for this.

yep, he's been doing it for years.

 

[pesh]

he probably just should have bought a few more, they were what, a tenner each in 2013?

 

[cyril_smear]

.


Let it go mate, just let it go

Imagine it though!

 

[cyril_smear]

he probably just should have bought a few more, they were what, a tenner each in 2013?

He probably paid pennies for them originally though.

 

[ddraig]

and this one! he got e for free!

Man has two guesses to unlock bitcoin worth $240m

A programmer is trying to remember the password to unlock a digital wallet set up a decade ago.

www.bbc.co.uk

Few dollars
Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.
At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.
He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.
And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.

 

[bimble]

"have form" ??

Yes he asked in 2013 and they even took him out on the tip to show him that it would be somewhere 4+ ft deep in an area size of football field
And that the police would have a team of 15+ people, ppe and diggers for a smaller area

e2a - "only" worth £4million in 2013

Rubbish tip quest for £4m hard drive

A Newport man has visited a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

www.bbc.co.uk

Just came across the same story, non video version - he’s trying to get Newport council to let him dig in exchange for a share of the treasure. They should just say yes shouldn’t they?

Man who accidentally threw out a bitcoin fortune offers $70 million for permission to dig it up | CNN

A British man who accidentally threw a hard drive loaded with bitcoin into the trash has offered the local authority where he lives more than $70 million if it allows him to excavate a landfill site.

www.cnn.com

 

[NoXion]

There's absolutely no guarantee that the relevant data will still be in a recoverable state after several years in such an environment. The council have a high risk of wasting a non-trivial amount of time and effort on such an exercise.

 

[ddraig]

Just came across the same story, non video version - he’s trying to get Newport council to let him dig in exchange for a share of the treasure. They should just say yes shouldn’t they?

Man who accidentally threw out a bitcoin fortune offers $70 million for permission to dig it up | CNN

A British man who accidentally threw a hard drive loaded with bitcoin into the trash has offered the local authority where he lives more than $70 million if it allows him to excavate a landfill site.

www.cnn.com

No
They explain their licence doesn't cover it, and there is no guarantee of finding it, and even if they did it would probably not work due to being crushed, rained on and other variety of bin juices

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I’ve heard that my vile ex, who extorted enormous lumps of cash from me, is now trying to get into stocks & shares and bitcoin. It would please me enormously if he invested my cash and lost the lot.

 

[tonypitt]

Has anyone ever used cryptocurrency before? I found one called Bitcoins. I think it's cool that this new form of money is in beta (4 bitcoins on the dollar at the moment... not bad, better than 2nd Life money, hnarf).

I think it's a cool idea, if bitcoin or one of the others ever did a facebook and became ridiculously "in" over the next 10 years, what would that do to the economy? Would it be like digital silver? Would iit be used by criminals to launder their ill-gotten gains? Would it be banned in the US, would they ban the internet? Is it anarcho-money?

it's a brave new world maaan, bitcoins.

Fk me, you could have at least DMd me this info at the time.

 

[teqniq]

Interesting. It had never occured to me that Iran and iranian businessmen would use bitcoin to get around sanctions. Pretty obvious in retrospect:

Iran, pressured by blackouts and pollution, targets Bitcoin

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's capital and major cities plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours.

apnews.com

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Interesting. It had never occured to me that Iran and iranian businessmen would use bitcoin to get around sanctions. Pretty obvious in retrospect:

Iran, pressured by blackouts and pollution, targets Bitcoin

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's capital and major cities plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours.

apnews.com

Very similar story to Venezuela and parts of China. Stealing subsidised energy from poor people and causing shortages.

Bitcoin is evil on every conceivable level. It depresses me a bit that there's a thread on Urban where people weigh up which crypto they should be 'investing' in.

 

[Johnny Doe]

Ouch

Bitcoin: Newport man's plea to find £210m hard drive in tip

James Howells threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin - now worth £210m - by mistake in 2013.

www.bbc.co.uk

And to think, I'm peeved to not be able to find the wallet ID for the £200's worth I bought in Nov 17.....

 

[NoXion]

They should keep the fucking cunt locked up until he gives the password. $60 million worth of stolen, extracted, dead wealth. What a piece of shit.

 

[nogojones]

Fk me, you could have at least DMd me this info at the time.

11 years of lurking

All spoilt now mind

 

[NoXion]

They should keep the fucking cunt locked up until he gives the password. $60 million worth of stolen, extracted, dead wealth. What a piece of shit.

Oh and did I mention that there are a whole bunch of sociopathic BitCoin cunts in the Twitter comments, gloating over how the authorities haven't "really" confiscated the money without the password. And also making excuses for the guy stealing other peoples' electricity and processing power in order to enrich himself.

It's like Bitcoin is for cunts or something.

 

[platinumsage]

I guess Section 49 of the RIPA 2000 would mean two years in prison for failing to reveal the password in the UK. Probably worth doing the time for £60 million though.

 

[grit]

What kind of absolute muppet would think a hard-drive might even function after being buried in landfill for over 7 years?

If the platters have not been punctured you would have a decent chance of retrieving the keys, it’s a tiny amount of data in total required to rebuild the wallet

 

[cybershot]

Bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina, analysis by Cambridge University suggests.
"Mining" for the cryptocurrency is power-hungry, involving heavy computer calculations to verify transactions.
Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps.

Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'

The rising value of Bitcoin leads to ever-higher energy consumption, researchers say.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[platinumsage]

Musk‘s acquisition of $1.5 billion bitcoin using Tesla’s cash reserves probably wipes out any CO2 benefit from Tesla’s cars being electric.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'

The rising value of Bitcoin leads to ever-higher energy consumption, researchers say.

www.bbc.co.uk

Words cannot express how much I despise it.

 

[kabbes]

it’s energy usage is nothing to do with its price (“... unless the value of the currency slumps”). The energy cost per transaction will just go up and up because that’s how the mathematical problem is set up