Briton who lost 7,500 BTC will use artificial intelligence in landfill search

A resident of Newport, England, James Howells, who accidentally discarded a hard drive containing 7,500 BTC in 2013, says he intends to search for it using X-ray scanning equipment and artificial intelligence. reports The Sun.

Howells studied aerial photographs of the landfill where the HDD is thought to have ended up. In his estimate, the search area covers 200 square metres and extends to a depth of about 15 metres. The volume of waste there is around 300,000–400,000 tonnes. Howells plans to spend a year scanning all 3,000 cubic metres of the landfill.

The Briton’s initiative was backed by an unnamed hedge fund willing to sponsor the purchase of equipment.

“We have a system with multiple conveyor belts, X-ray scanners, and an AI-based device. It can be trained to recognise objects whose size and density are similar to a hard drive,” said James Howells.

The price of a single scanning device is £500,000 (over $690,000); the device for removing contamination costs £100,000 (over $138,000).

Howells noted that the search would be conducted with maximum delicacy to avoid damaging the hard drive. The current value of his lost bitcoins is nearly $240 million.

However, local authorities oppose the dig. They said the planned procedure would be very costly and could harm the environment.

“The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and processing the waste could run into millions of pounds—with no guarantee that they will find the hard drive and that it will be in working order,” said Newport City Council.

It remains unclear whether Howells will be able to resolve this matter.

In January 2021, the Briton offered the Newport authorities about $72 million for the landfill dig, but was refused.

According to Chainanalysis, about $140 billion in Bitcoin are held in lost or forgotten cryptocurrency wallets.

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