Judge Rejects Man From Retrieving $750 Million of Bitcoin From Landfill (crypto.news) 88
An IT engineer from Wales lost a decade-long legal battle to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins from a Newport landfill. The hard drive, accidentally thrown away in 2013, is now valued between $700-750 million. crypto.news reports: However, Judge Keyser KC ruled there were no "reasonable grounds" for the claim, citing environmental concerns and the council's ownership of the landfill contents. The landfill reportedly holds 1.4 million tonnes of waste, but Howells claims to have pinpointed the hard drive's location to a 100,000-ton section. Reacting to the ruling, Howells expressed frustration, calling it a "kick in the teeth," according to the BBC.
Idiot (Score:4, Informative)
Only thing dumber than fighting a court case for the right to dig through 100,000 tons of trash is expecting the hard drive that spent 12 years there to still be legible. Oh, and throwing out your bitcoins wasn't all that clever either.
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Ironically, he was probably defying or ignoring laws or regulations that forbid dumping electronic devices in common waste. He should have put in in the designated area of the dump. Of course, in that case it would have been taken apart and disposed of more thoroughly.
I'm lazy, but even I would do a daily backup if hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. That's more than most sysops get in a lifetime.
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At the time it happened: bitcoin were worth nothing.
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by the time they potentially find the HDD, it will be worth nothing again.
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It was thrown away "in 2013". Now, Bitcoin saw a dramatic rise in value that year - on the last day of the year it was worth $754.01, but even if we're being charitable and assume January 3 of that year (the lowest value it was), it was still worth $13.28.
The total is 8000 bitcoins, which means that even when thrown away the coins were worth at least $106,240. Nowhere near the millions it is now, but still not something that you'd want to just casually toss.
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He's forgotten that he threw the disk away because it had crashed.
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IIRC, that story has been going on for couple years at least...
(Reading TFS...)
Yeah, he threw it away in 2013 and I think the story became popular a little later when the price of Bitcoins skyrocketed and the guy decided he wanted his hard drive back so probably more than 2 years ago since I heard about it. I think his business partner threw the hard drive away etc. etc. etc.
I am curious if we are going to hear about this story again after that, like, say, the guy gets caught in the trash with a real miner
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
He didn't throw it away as such. He put it in a black bin bag and left it in his hall. His girlfriend took it to the dump thinking it was trash. Still pretty stupid of him though.
This raises another point about Bitcoin though which I haven't ever seen discussed. If these coins are now irretrievable, what exactly happens to them? As far as I'm aware they just stay on the blockchain, assigned to a wallet that can never be opened. As Bitcoins are a finite resource, surely the value of these should be taken off the total value of Bitcoin? They are in effect worthless. It's as if you've invested in gold then dropped it into a volcano. How much of the total amount of Bitcoin are in this state, where they can never be redeemed? This isn't the first such case I've heard of. And if this keeps happening, sooner or later all Bitcoin will be in this state.
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Man theres not a lot of people that can point to an ex girlfriend and say "That B**** cost me nearly a billion dollars!" lol
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
Statistically speaking, it's a regression to zero on the number of BTC in active circulation as they get lost, but that doesn't really matter as long as they have value to someone and can be traded in small enough fractions of a whole BTC to facilitate exchange. There are already 100m Satoshi's in a single BTC, but I guess if the number of BTC in active circulation fell low enough and/or the value of a single BTC got high enough, a Satoshi could be sub-divided further if needed. However, with all the consolidation and "offline" trading though BTC holding companies that essentially aggregate individual owners of BTC into a much smaller number of wallets they control (think traditional banks doing clearance of all their individual account transactions at the end of the day), that probably isn't necessary.
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(1) I imagine if someone were to use a dormant Bitcoin wallet worth billions of dollars, the price of Bitcoin would plummet. Because that means there is a lot more of them in circulation than previously thought, and that someone probably has now plans to sell out.
(2) With the value of Bitcoin rising, and periodic future "halvings", at some point I imagine trying to crack the passwords of dormant accounts will become more lucrative than mining Bitcoins, statistically. Maybe it
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He put it in a black bin bag
This is why I avoid using opaque plastic bags for storing important stuff that I want to find later. If you can't see inside it, it might as well not exist until you go poking into every bag to see what you even have. (The other reason is that my mom sometimes used to use those to store stuff, and after ten years in the attic, they all turn into black plastic flakes. Because they were made as trash bags, not storage bags, duh!)
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I call bullshit. He's an IT engineer - no way he had a girlfriend, or at least, not one that can put the rubbish out.
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If these coins are now irretrievable, what exactly happens to them? As far as I'm aware they just stay on the blockchain, assigned to a wallet that can never be opened.
Correct
As Bitcoins are a finite resource, surely the value of these should be taken off the total value of Bitcoin? They are in effect worthless.
How will you pragmatically determine if the wallet isn't being used because the key is lost, vs the wallet isn't being used because the owner has chosen to not use the key?
Is your emergency cash stash simply locked away in a safe in your house unused because there hasn't been an emergency yet? Or should the cash be considered lost/destroyed and no longer honored as money?
Is your retirement fund to be deleted because you wisely choose to not touch it until retirement? Why shouldn't it be declared ab
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So it's probable that the disc was crushed, shredded and melted anyway.
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Yes, they usually use a big electromagnet to pull out any magnetic metals. I'm pretty sure the hard drive would be pulled out by that, and would have ended up in a furnace somewhere to be melted down.
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Even if it wasn't pulled out by that, having a massive electromagnet waved past it would have fucked any data on the platters, being magneto-sensitive. NSA-rated drive degaussers only put out about 20,000 gauss. I can't really find the gauss rating on industrial scrap metal retrieval electromagnets, but if they're rated to pick up a thousand kg of metal I have a feeling they're well beyond 20k.
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he was probably defying or ignoring laws or regulations that forbid dumping electronic devices in common waste.
Not him. The Woman; his romantic partner/SO who collected and dumped his hard drive with a pile of junk effectively without permission.
I'm lazy, but even I would do a daily backup if hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake.
Hundreds of millions were not at stake the day the hard drive was lost. He could have easily replaced it back then at a much lower cost.
The drive was lost in 2013. In 2
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Even at the low end of that estimate, it's still more than the value of my house. Not doing basic due diligence like keeping good backups is massive negligence. Yes, his gir
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Even at the low end of that estimate, it's still more than the value of my house. Not doing basic due diligence like keeping good backups is massive negligence
It's not negligence. I agree that it would be very smart to backup your keys, and the risk of losing data is very high if you never create and secure any backups.
But there is no legal duty to back up your property - digital or otherwise that a reasonable person observes. Most individuals don't backup even their most precious data.This is just anothe
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Not him. The Woman; his romantic partner/SO who collected and dumped his hard drive with a pile of junk effectively without permission.
The detail I heard that you left out is that he put it in a black trash bag and left if in the hall. When she was cleaning, she thought it was trash because—shockingly—it looked like trash and took it to the trash dumpster. The fact that she would do that “without permission” suggests she had to do that all the time: keep the place clean.
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The detail I heard that you left out is that he put it in a black trash bag and left if in the hall.
Sure.. she accidentally mistook non-trash for trash and threw it out. It is true, but that information would be irrelevent as far as the legal analysis would be concerned. Not like she is being charged with a crime: it's a civil matter. When it comes to civil matters it generally does not matter that she is innocent and it's an honest mistake: the liability for negligence still falls upon the person
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Sure.. she accidentally mistook non-trash for trash and threw it out. It is true, but that information would be irrelevent as far as the legal analysis would be concerned.
And what would be the legal matter? She was cleaning up. She took out a trash bag. But it wasn't trash.
Not like she is being charged with a crime: it's a civil matter. When it comes to civil matters it generally does not matter that she is innocent and it's an honest mistake: the liability for negligence still falls upon the person who makes the mistake -- in this case throwing something away someone else's property that appeared to be in a bag commonly used for trash without actually verifying that it is in fact trash.
Your legal analysis is woefully lacking. In speaking of civil terms, at best, this is a case of conversion [wikipedia.org]. First of all, the statute of limitations for conversions in a civil case in the UK is 6 years. Second, while conversion deals with strict liability in that the woman's intent is not a factor, the legal problem is your "without permission" requirement. If she cleaned all the time, then it is assumed
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The fact that she would do that âoewithout permissionâ suggests she had to do that all the time: keep the place clean.
I had a woman staying with me once who cleaned the place only once without asking and threw away something special I had been keeping in the fridge, and no there was nothing whatsoever wrong with it. Your assumption is unwarranted. Sometimes people do things without asking on the basis that you will be thankful and fuck things all up in the process.
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They're not expecting it to just "be legible". They have a forensics lab on their team that plans to disassemble the drive and do the most advanced manual data physically possible. The lab believes they can recover it.
Even if they lose some bits, every bit recovered halves the search space.
I understand that this was thrown out by accident, but still, I'm always shocked by how people just throw away hard drives. They're (potentially offsite) unhackable backups of all of your content as of that date. Put
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He'd probably be better off being an "influencer" that talks about the value of backups and data security. "I make a $750million mistake - don't make the same one!"
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It is a hard drive - not an SSD.
So, the plates are most like still readable.
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You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Wayne Gretzky. Also, IMO, his biggest mistake was not offering the council a portion of the bitcoin, say 1/3 of it, as a thank you. I am assuming he didn't.
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He apparently offered them 1/4 the bitcoins, which they understandably rejected. (Not just because the bitcoins weren't worth as much back then, but what are the odds he'd actually find them, and they'd be recoverable -- vs the very real expenses and potential damages.) Maybe they'd have accepted money up front?
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It's just rubbish (Score:3)
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Bitcoin is only "worth" what suckers pay for it, trying to "cash out" such an amount of imaginary coins will show its "real" value (it's called dumping for a reason). The hard drive is worth more in the dump. All the big "hodlers" like Microstrategy have might as well thrown their hard drives in the dump as well. I also support throwing funko pops and Pokemon cards in the dump for the same reason.
Today, "dumping" 8000 btc even at once would be worth about 2% of daily traded bitcoin value, barely a blip on the radar. Also, fiat currency is also worth only what "suckers" will give you for it. Quaint leftist fantasy of how it's purely about "taxman wats dollars and will throw you in jail if he doesn't get them" notwithstanding. How many dollars that will be circulated this year will be given to taxman, 0.00001%?
Re:It's just rubbish (Score:5, Interesting)
Fiat currency is a system backed up by the power of taxes, which is a system backed up by the power of weapons.
Why, exactly, did you think that fiat currency is so vastly more stable than Bitcoin? Bitcoin is purely speculative. Fiat currency has fundamentals (a government that makes up like a quarter to a third of your entire economy, which demands it as its means of exchange).
Bitcoin is also a Dunning-Kruger version of how to run an economy. Fiat currencies target small but steady inflation for a reason: it encourages economic activity. The stability is obvious - you want it to be easy for businesses to plan and invest for the long term, and you want some change because you don't want wage / price structures to ossify. But a low, steady level of inflation encourages spending and investment because people expect prices to rise over time, reducing the incentive to hoard money. Which in turn boosts demand, which in turn boosts businesses and job creation. Deflation does the opposite - businesses and consumers are encouraged to not spend because they can anticipate future price drops, so you get into economic contraction, rising unemployment, low capacity utilization, and in general an economic crash. A small amount of inflation also helps reduce the cost of debt over time - but not so much as to discourage lending.
TL/DR, the two things you want in a currency are stability, and a small, as-steady-as-possible amount of inflation. Bitcoin is precisely the opposite of this.
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Fiat currencies target small but steady inflation for a reason: it encourages economic activity. The stability is obvious - you want it to be easy for businesses to plan and invest for the long term, and you want some change because you don't want wage / price structures to ossify. But a low, steady level of inflation encourages spending and investment because people expect prices to rise over time, reducing the incentive to hoard money.
[Emphasis mine]
Explain one thing to me, putting crypto completely aside for a moment. Leftists cry and whine that rampant consumptionism is making Gaia cry or something, also that people's savings are at a record low. And it's somehow capitalism's fault, obviously. But if you ask them how we should run economy they spew this neoKeynesian bullcrap about inflation being good, and why? "Because it encourages spending (consumptionism in other words) and decreases incentive to hoard money (in other words, rap
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Monetary inflation harms people with cash savings, and people whose wage is based on a minimum wage which is not tied to inflation.
The solution isn't just to have inflation, it's also to peg the minimum wage to it.
This punishes cash hoarders. Right now the wealthy have unprecedented cash reserves in various tax dodges both abroad and at home. Yes, actual cash, not just liquid investments. This is public knowledge, and the information is calculated by comparing circulating money with printed money. Several s
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The thing is "just handing money to the poor" only stimulates a subset of the economy. It's an important subset, but not the only important subset.
I don't have a working economic model, but *that* much is obvious. Also "hoarding money" isn't all bad. It has some positive effects for society (as well as for the individual doing the hoarding). But it may well be happening at greater than optimal levels. (That said, perhaps it should be legal to seal from money hidden from the government. That's just a w
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The thing is "just handing money to the poor" only stimulates a subset of the economy. It's an important subset, but not the only important subset.
How so? The poor spend the money on things they need, the money trickles upwards as it always does, the same people wind up with it when that happens but first it employs people and they are able to buy things and keep the economy running like it doesn't if they can't.
Also "hoarding money" isn't all bad. It has some positive effects for society
Name one.
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Monetary inflation harms people with cash savings, and people whose wage is based on a minimum wage which is not tied to inflation.
The solution isn't just to have inflation, it's also to peg the minimum wage to it.
This punishes cash hoarders. Right now the wealthy have unprecedented cash reserves in various tax dodges both abroad and at home.
LOL, no, it fucks up the middle class. As do all the leftist measures aimed at harming "the wealthy". "The wealthy" have access to financial instruments AND the knowledge how to use them to just show the middle finger to the FED and invest in instruments that protect them from inflation. The middle class doesn't, and it's them that get buttraped. You know, all those deplorables that *DARE* (yes, I know, deplorable deplorables) want to buy their living space from savings rather than on debt, feeding more ban
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If the cost of a loaf of bread doubles and the cost of a house halves, does the value of the dollar stay the same? I think that argument is so oversimplified that it loses all meaning. How hungry are you? Do you have a place to live?
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Fiat currency is a system backed up by the power of taxes, which is a system backed up by the power of weapons.
Almost, but not quite. Fiat isn't backed by weapons, it's backed by economic trade and GDP. The same as bitcoin, except many orders of magnitude larger. There are some countries with lots of weapons, and the power of taxation that haven't avoided hyper inflation or stabilised their currency. It's fundamentally stabilised by the quality of the underlying economy.
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Nixon dumped the gold standard for a reason. Bitcoin attempts to bring it back at a great ecological cost.
You do know that gold is still available as an investment option, even if dollar's value isn't tied to it?
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At the same time, since it is all just rubbish why not let the guy dig through it for his particular piece of rubbish? What's he going to do, make a mess of the trash?
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Yes, he's going to make a mess of the trash, and in the process spread environmental toxins of various kinds. There are good reasons that municipal trash heaps are licensed, regulated, and layered with protections. The soup should generally be called "toxic industrial waste".
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Stupid comment.
How can he dig around in the landfill, if the owner of the landfill does not let him?
Boing? Boing! BOING!!!???
It is private property. Fenced. And most likely has even guards!!!
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That's funny. Guarding garbage. An empire of dirt.
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I have a hard time seeing how there are environmental concerns about moving trash around in a dump.
what are the environmental concerns related to digging in a landfill
ChatGPT said:
Digging in a landfill can present several environmental concerns, including:
Contamination of Groundwater: Landfills often contain hazardous materials, such as chemicals, heavy metals, and toxic substances. When digging into a landfill, these contaminants can be released into the surrounding soil and potentially seep into groundwater sources, leading to long-term environmental damage and human health
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. And I have a hard time seeing how there are environmental concerns about moving trash around in a dump.
That suggests you don't know how landfills work. Landfills are not 100% open pits of sewage that ooze hazardous chemicals 24/7. Landfills like the ones in England are designed not to leak out chemicals as that could contaminate ground water. An area of the landfill is lined and then filled with trash and once the area is full, that area is sealed and covered. In this case the HDD was dumped 12 years ago so it has been covered. Opening up a landfill has environmental concerns.
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Prettty much everything you said is true.
But this isn't a normal man. He's a moron who thinks he was a bitcoin miner 13 years ago and wishes his hard drive is happily spinning in the dump ready for him to do WHAT EXACTLY?
Maybe those BTCs were only worth $8K instead of $90K. I'll bite. So instead of it being "worth" $700M it would have been worth $80M.
Anyone STUPID ENOUGH to have no backups of "owning" 80 million dollars and throwing out the hard drive, I mean come on, this is a Darwin Award waiting to be
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Anyone STUPID ENOUGH to have no backups of "owning" 80 million dollars and throwing out the hard drive, I mean come on, this is a Darwin Award waiting to be handed over... in garbage.
Apparently, that hard drive was his only backup [slashdot.org] of his Bitcoins. Double award for him!
Venture capital, anyone? (Score:3)
The guy has offered the council 1/4 of the loot.
If I were the mayor, I would be demanding the money up front as reparations for any cleanup required to re-bury everything.
This guy should launch a go-fund-me and he'd have the cash in a week! LOL, what?
Sorry mate but you're just have to eke out a meager existence like the rest of us poor sods who never made it rich.
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What makes you think the government didn't make a sound financial decision? Do you think it's possible for a private person to wish money into existence? He's not worth that sum of money so he has no ability to pay it up front. The best you can do is take his meagre savings and then watch him file for bankruptcy. What happened here was sound financial policy.
Don't let that stop your anti-government rant though. I'm sure you can find something real to complain about.
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If I were the mayor, I would be demanding the money up front as reparations for any cleanup required to re-bury everything.
There is no money up front. It would be like suing me for $1bn. You'd get only a tiny fraction of that because I only have a tiny fraction of that.
Your Bullshit Headline (Score:4, Informative)
You cryptocucks have misrepresented this story consistently.
"Judge Rejects Man From Retrieving $750 Million of Bitcoin From Landfill"
should be
"Judge Denies Man's Request to Waste Time and Money Looking for Broken Hard Drive in Landfill"
If they are sorting their trash at a transfer station, the HDD has been sorted out and recycled. If they are not, then it's been banged around aggressively and destroyed. Either way there's no pot of gold at the end of that landfill.
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You cryptocucks have misrepresented this story consistently.
"Judge Rejects Man From Retrieving $750 Million of Bitcoin From Landfill"
should be
"Judge Denies Man's Request to Waste Time and Money Looking for Broken Hard Drive in Landfill"
Actually, it should be:
... since he's unwilling to put up the money up front (estimated to be $1Billion according to last story on this) to ensure he doesn't skip town with an environmental hazard for the town to deal with when his search fails.
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Really? The environmental hazard of trash already in a landfill? Yeah, I'm really worried about that.
Yes, dumb dumb, the environmental hazard of disturbing a properly managed site [slashdot.org] to pointlessly look for a hard drive that's going to be totally unusable.
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Really? The environmental hazard of trash already in a landfill? Yeah, I'm really worried about that.
We can tell that you don't know what you're talking about because you aren't.
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Yes, idiot.
You are a real moron, aren't you?
I can bet your other opinions are equally as intelligent.
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From the moment you throw trash away.. (Score:2)
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... claims the State.
Which can't afford to feed the poor but can reject $200M they could use to feed the poor.
Only the State is this morally retarded
If a Church owned the landfill they would have taken the deal years ago and would have been feeding the poor by now.
"But it says right here on this paper!" is the oldest Satanic trick in the book besides tricking a man's wife.
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If a Church owned the landfill they would have taken the deal years ago and would have been foisting off the resultant toxic cleanup to the governments after having recovered nothing.
Dude, you are smoking soo much *something*, can I haz some?
You are the one being morally retarded here.
"Reject from" ? ! (Score:1)
Please don't just make shit up - stick to English.
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Solution? (Score:2)
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Gather your investors to buy the landfill/land. Then search at your leisure.
Like was mentioned in the last story about this [slashdot.org]: they'd need to properly manage their pointless "dig", and put up some money up front to guarantee they don't take off and leave the town with a mess to clean up from the [formerly properly managed but now] disturbed landfill site, and no bank or investors will be willing to give him any credit backed by 'lost Bitcoins'.
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A better solution (Score:2)
Is to get a job there and find it on your own, on the side, on the down low. Not engage in litigation drawing scrutiny
Hint: it's already been recovered (Score:2)
Does anyone think that this drive hasn't already been recovered by the government years ago?
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Backups (Score:2)
And once again this whole sorry saga proves why you need to take regular backups and test them. Including an off site backup.