What would you do if you lost a billion dollars?

Whilst walking the dog, I’ve been entertained by a fascinating series of podcasts on BBC Sounds called Fool’s Gold. It tells the story of two detectorists – folks who search everywhere using metal detectors – who found gold dating back to the 8th century. Very rare gold. 300 or more coins plus some jewellery. It’s worth around £15 million or more. So, what do the guys do? They take it and don’t report it but, under UK law, you have to report a hoard of ancient value, and then it is sold to a museum or at auction, and the value is shared 50/50 between the finder and the land owner. These two ijits just decided to take it and sell if gradually to their underground contacts. Silly billies.

The result? 5 years in jail.

I wont’ say much more, as you should listen to it. Nevertheless, it made me think of another detective case. This one is the missing bitcoins.

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

If you don’t know this story, a computer expert has battled for a decade to recover a £600 million bitcoin fortune that is buried in a council dump in south Wales. In the summer of 2013 he put the hard drive containing his bitcoin wallet in a black bag during an office sort-out and left it in the hall of his house. His then partner - note 'then' - thought the bag was rubbish, and took it to the dump where it has been lost ever since.

Shoot!

The thing is that a hard drive has metal inside and so I’m just wondering whether a metal detectorist could dig it up. So is James Howells, the man who lost his hard drive … but he has had a hard time trying to find the lost hard drive. This is because the local council will not give him access to the dump to find it.

Taking the council to court on several occasions, Howells has lost all of his bids to get the council to give him access to the landfill and find his lost bitcoins. On every occasion he has lost his case, even with a team of pro bono lawyers working on his behalf (no win, no fee!).

Now the case has moved on, and the council plans to cap the tip and put it to rest … so James has worked out a plan to buy it and dig it. The lawyer representing Howells in court claims that they can perform a search which would be a “precise excavation” of a “small area which we have been able to identify”. The lawyer Dean Armstrong, who specialises in crypto and blockchain assets, added: “This is a finely tuned plan by expert excavators.”

Well, still no result.

I just have this vision that in a thousand years, some metal detectorist in 2130 finds a hard drive with $100 billion or more of bitcoins on it … but has no idea what it is, so throws it back in the ground.

Ah well … meanwhile I do feel kind of sorry for Mr. Howells, particularly when he says that he could: “spend the rest of [his] life working nine to five and thinking about [the fortune] every day”. That sounds like purgatory.