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Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump
- jeffwass 5y agoThis wss literally a plot point in HBO's Silicon Valley : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrEjaZw95kI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrEjaZw95kI (Russ Hanneman searching the landfill site for a lost thumb drive with his crypto).
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoSilicon Valley is a underrated satire. Not a great comedy if you're not into the dry humor revolving around the SV lifestyle but I really enjoyed it.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoThat's the first thing I thought of. Mike Judge is a prophet.
- detaro 5y agoA "prophet" for putting something that has been reported since 2013 or so in a TV show that came out 2018?
- edmcnulty101 5y agoOh that happened almost a decade ago. Why is the New Yorker JUST now reporting on it.
- detaro 5y agoProbably because of the new scheme of seeking financing for a digging operation, now it's worth a lot more.
- detaro 5y ago(2013 article: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289 - back then it was only 4M)
- dctoedt 5y ago> A "prophet" for putting something that has been reported since 2013 or so in a TV show that came out 2018? A "prophet" is also a truth-teller. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prophet https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prophet
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- petters 5y agoNo, that plot point was likely written because of this.
- boopboopbadoop 5y agoThis story happened and was publicized first. I’d imagine Judge used it as inspiration for that episode. None-the-less, I love Mike Judge!
- edmcnulty101 5y agoOh I thought that jump drive in the dump JUST happened. Looks like the New Yorker is just now reporting it and it happened years ago.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoYeah, this whole New Yorker piece is not a new story. The James Howells story has been around for years and party inspired the Russ Hanneman plot haha
- DonHopkins 5y agoDigging through tons of garbage could be considered "Proof of Work"! Wouldn't it be nice if the Bitcoin shills could figure out a way of proving they worked to clean up the environment, instead of destroying it.
- jkepler 5y agoOne could read up on how bitcoin mining is being used in the west Texas Permian Basin to help reduce flared methane gas. Or, how electric companies could mine bitcoin to provide their grids with power consumption for demand/supply load balancing, enabling them to produce more green energy that would otherwise be feasible. One just has to be willing to look at the facts rather than repeating environmentalist characterizations of bitcoin technology as bad.
- rocqua 5y agoIf you have mining rigs that you use for load balancing your electric network, wouldn't you want to run them 24/7? Especially because of your upfront capital costs for buying the mining rigs. Would be cool though if a day with little wind would make for a perfect time to do a 50% attack.
- jkepler 5y agoGood question. I'm not sure if the details, but you could learn more here: https://oilmanmagazine.com/how-and-why-natural-gas-flaring-is-being-used-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://oilmanmagazine.com/how-and-why-natural-gas-flaring-i... https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/oil-drillers-bitcoin-miners-bond-over-natural-gas-2021-05-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/oil-dr... Part of the key is that when there's an increase in power demand in a grid, they usually have to use more expensive sources of power, but if they can temporarily shut off their bitcoin mining to meet demand spikes, they can more efficiently manage their network load. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/10/11/bitcoin-mining-is-reshaping-the-energy-sector-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/10/11/bitcoin-mining-is... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/04/bitcoin-miners-say-theyre-fixing-texas-electric-grid-ted-cruz-agrees.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/04/bitcoin-miners-say-theyre-fi... https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-mining-fits-texas-energy-grid https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-mining-fits-tex... I don't know a lot about energy grids, and would love to hear from someone who does, but it sounds like bitcoin is a new technology that could provide incredible efficiencies to electricity grids' ability to balance their loads and supply consumers with greener energy overall.
- willis936 5y agoIt's 8 AM. Do you know where your data is? Always have a plan. I recently switched to a TrueNAS system that I back everything up to. It uploads to B2 daily with remote encryption. Keys and passwords are kept in a keepass database on my phone and computers. I've done test pulls as a fire drill. I don't have $500 M in crypto. I don't even have $5 k in crypto.
- ceejayoz 5y ago> It's 8 AM, do you know where your data is? Always have a plan. Sure, but a significant portion of the problem is that's not the real question. "It's 8 AM, do you know how important your data will be in ten years?"
- koolba 5y agoMake sure you can’t overwrite the remote site. It’s not a true offsite backup if the source can issue a delete or replace command.
- willis936 5y agoI have immutable snapshots on B2 with a few week lifetime. It is the weakest point, but I'd have to do something very dumb and not realize it within that period. I could extend that period, but it costs more in exchange for trusting myself less. Edit: actually I just checked and I had left the default lifecycle rules (keep all versions). The bill is still less than a dropbox personal bill for my modest usage.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoIts 8 AM. Do you know where your fire extinguisher is? How to do first aid? What to do in a flood? Earthquake? Home break-in? If your bank goes insolvent, and you are so cashless you can't even buy a meal? Most people aren't prepared for emergencies really, and dats one is not even at the top
- bruce343434 5y agoThis article is about someone who threw away the hard drive containing his wallet file/keys, the only copy he had of it. His wallet would be worth $500M. He wants to excavate the garbage dump to find it. I'm just wondering what that would look like. It seems a Sisyphean task at best, like seeking a needle in a haystack. And how do you make sure you don't accidentally damage a hard drive with an excavator? What makes him think the hard drive is not already damaged because it has been driven over or just the weight of garbage crushing it? What if his hard drive went through one of those conveyor belts with a giant magnet above it to separate metals? I'm not an expert, but if you take the cost of the excavation project (not just excavation, but also sifting!), then multiply it by the chance of success, it feels like the expected value is less than the wallet. It's interesting to think about though. You can easily throw away a pile of cash, but never half a billion. The volume would be too big, you would notice. But a bitcoin wallet of the same street value fits on a micro SD, it could literally fall through a hole in your pocket.
- CPLX 5y agoIt would be trivially easy to throw away half a billion dollars like this. All you'd have to do is have a winning ticket for a $500MM lottery jackpot in your pocket and put it through the laundry. Crypto is gambling. People have done it for millennia. You invent some system and some arbitrary rules about what’s valuable (the right domino, an ace of hearts, a jpeg of a monkey, a beanie baby) and then some people win some money and some people lose. This guy won, and then he lost. Oh well. Just like with the lost lottery ticket no enterprise of actual value has been created or destroyed by this misfortune.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"Crypto is gambling" Bitcoin is 14 years old now, it's time to get used to it. There are people who hold who were born after it was invented. Its older than some financial instruments. I am not arguing it will be successfull or that its good, but it is definately proven beyong gambling
- chinathrow 5y ago
- misja111 5y agoAnonymity comes at a price.
- egeozcan 5y agoWe have an anonymous system, it's called cash. The price is you lose the anonymity if you store it in a bank, which something you have to do in many countries if you own too much. You can still withdraw some and spend it anonymously. Given, you can't buy a house anonymously with cash, but can you do that with bitcoin?
- shric 5y agoCash also fairly rapidly depreciates
- OJFord 5y agoNot inherently.
- jkepler 5y agoNo, under the iron grip of central banks.
- OJFord 5y agoWell my point is it's nothing to do with 'physical cash' or 'blockchain currency', it's an external effect which could be applied to whatever. Sure less so with something decentralised (again nothing to do with the medium really) - but you can still have positive (as in >0) inflation without someone setting inflation targets and having an 'iron grip' with which to mostly achieve them.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Cash also fairly rapidly depreciates Which makes it a bad store of value, but has nothing to do with its utility as a medium of exchange. We have lots of productive investments to hold value in between times it is is converted to cash for exchange. Bitcoin is mainly attractive right now as one of (or an alternative to, depending on how you define “productive”) those, with a much higher average growth rate but also much more volatility than many of the other popular options.
- skilled 5y agoI would not want to be this person, in any shape or form. It's fascinating to think that a man's mind can become so entangled in an alternate reality in hopes of getting back something that he lost. While it would be a wonderful success story to see him find his hard-drive, I can't even begin to imagine the levels of exhaustion and stress he has endured up to this point.
- FDSGSG 5y agoThe part that must really fuck with him is that at this valuation recovering the hard drive would be an entirely realistic endeavour if he simply got the permission to do so.
- Stevvo 5y agoYour comment makes me think about how sometimes people build their own mental prisons. I've met several people who told me stories of loosing their Bitcoin; the people who get too caught up on the alternate reality are those who fail to realize they would have sold their coins anyway the first time they had a bill to pay.
- DennisP 5y agoI see this point made a lot, and I'm sure it's true for a lot of people, but there are also people who did in fact hold their bitcoin for a very long time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- flycaliguy 5y agoI feel like his best bet would be to consult various religious leaders and convert this experience into a profound voyage to faith. Then market a book & speaking tour. Quit at 3 mil and call it a day.
- skilled 5y agoHahahaha, you are probably right, too.
- clavicat 5y agoThe abstraction of mining made concrete. When Bitcoin reaches a certain price, it will become economical to excavate the entire landfill to physically mine the trove of Bitcoin. The growing value forces the ore to surface.
- marderfarker2 5y agoIt’s worth half a billion in theory.
- nikanj 5y agoIt’s worth half a billion if half a million people all want to invest $1000 into bitcoin - assuming no other sellers on the market. Ponzi schemes are wack, and you can still find people who think they too can become hundred-millionaires by putting a few hundred into bitcoin
- jkepler 5y agoExcept that bitcoin fits none of the definitions of a ponzi scheme, unless you think money as a technology for storing wealth is a ponzi scheme. For example, under the gold standard (1870s until 1913), the US saw gradual price deflation, meaning people expected their money to gradually grow in purchasing power, yet (amazingly) the economy grew! Turns out deflation isn't bad, even thought it may look like a ponzi to those who don't understand it. https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/
- trollied 5y agoThe BBC reported on this 8 years ago, when the bitcoin was worth $4m! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-2513428...
- isoprophlex 5y agoBy not being allowed to excavate that landfill, he is basically making money ;)
- MrPatan 5y agoMaybe he can get a loan against them, like those big stone wheels some people I can't remember used as money somewhere in the world I also can't remember.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoSlightly more lucrative but harder to find than the 700,000 unsold Atari game cartridges, including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, eventually found in a New Mexico landfill site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial
- teekert 5y agoI think I'm better off, I wanted to start mining when people were still generating btc on their laptops, didn't get it to work. At least I have no place to go back to for that off chance that I somehow swing history the right way and persevere a little longer. Unlike this lad, who forever has this minute chance of being rich again. I think you're better off with 0 chance.
- fbanon 5y agoYou shouldn't feel bad about missing out. You would have sold anyway when it was worth $20. Or $50. Or $100. etc. Like the guy who've spent 10k BTC for two Papa John's pizzas in 2010.
- teekert 5y agoThat's a fact. I have a wallet from 2014 where I occasionally ordered sushi or Raspberry Pi stuff (on pi-hut) from, every time the amount left after ordering something grew again and I could buy/order something else. Pretty shocking to see what I paid for the earliest RPi's and Sushi back in the day, with the current rate.
- Avalaxy 5y agoI was very active in cryptocurrencies between 2013 and 2014. Had around 25 BTC and I bought hundreds of ethereums in the presale. Sold them all for a minor profit after there was yet another crash and I gave up on it lol. In retrospect I would now be a multi-millionaire at age 30, rather than a working slave living in a rental apartment. Ah well. Like the sibling post said: I probably would have sold it before this point anyway, I'm not THAT diamond handed.
- pmarreck 5y ago> The computer’s whirring fan began to irritate Hafina, and he decided to stop. “It wasn’t worth putting up a fight,” he remembers. Why, yes. This time, it was. >..< Thing is, back in that era, you could mine a few full bitcoins a night doing that.
- ginger2016 5y agoHow can anyone verify he owned all these bitcoins?
- rocqua 5y agoSeeing the bitcoin sitting still on his address is a matter of looking up the UTXO. Confirming the address really belongs to him is probably doable by talking to the few people in the community back then.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fbanon 5y agoThis is why I simply don't throw away data. It's so cheap to just store it indefinitely. I have all my personal projects, emails, instant messages going back to 2002. It's literally just a matter of copying your home directory when getting a new computer... Sure, you can get fancy with backups, cloud, and whatnot, but data hygiene 101 is just not throwing it away. I don't get why it's so hard.
- nicbou 5y agoIt's the collection of data that I find difficult. A lot of it is locked with various cloud providers, and can only be retrieved with manual exports.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- acomjean 5y agoI worked building landfills. The scale house operators (who weighed the truck) had some stories about accidentally tossed things. Someone came and asked if they could look for a silver metal box. Sure, they said your not likely to find it. They insisted on looking. What’s in the box? A lot of money. The only success was when someone got there before the trash truck and they dumped it in a certain area and wallet was recovered. For $500 million it’s worth trying..though who knows if the drive will even be in one piece.. though landfills are pretty dry and almost nothing rots. landfill archiology.
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