Featured Image Credit: @howelzy/X / Dan Kitwood / Staff / Getty
The woman who accidentally threw away her boyfriend's $630,000,000 Bitcoin fortune over 10 years ago has finally spoken out, and claims that she hopes he'll find it.
Much like losing a winning lottery ticket, losing track of a hard drive filled with 8,000 Bitcoins would likely consume the life of anyone.
While it mattered little to the owner of the hard drive, James Howells, at the time, as his mining efforts were collectively worth 'just' £4 million ($5.07m), the rise in the price of Bitcoin - especially with the surge of cryptocurrency in recent months - has seen it's overall value skyrocket beyond $600,000,000.
Speaking to the BBC back in 2013, Howells recalls the situation when he lost track of the hard drive in the process of moving house:
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"I had a clearout of my old IT equipment - I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it... so it go thrown in the bin."
Turns out that Howells wasn't alone in this mistake, as his girlfriend at the time has revealed that she was indeed the one who took the 'rubbish' and dropped it off at the tip.
Halfina Eddy-Evans revealed, in an interview with MailOnline, that Howells asked her to bin the hard drive:
"Yes, I threw the rubbish, he asked me to," she explains, "The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away, saying 'there's a bag of rubbish here to be taken to the tip.
"I thought he should be running his errands, not me, but I did it to help out."
I bet the pair wish that she had been a bit less generous now.
What remains, over a decade later, is that Howells has switched his begging to Newport Council, as he has spent the last few years trying to get into the landfill which he claims holds the valuable hard drive.
He's even offered a share of the money to the Council - which is claimed will transform the area into the 'Dubai or Las Vegas of the UK' - although his initial offer of a 25% share has since been reduced to 10% with the rising value.
There's certainly no love lost between Eddy-Evans and her now ex-boyfriend Howells though, as she has argued that "losing it was not my fault," and has a rather spiteful reason why she hopes that the drive will find its way back to him:
"I'd love nothing more than him to find it. I'm sick and tired of hearing about it," continuing on to add "not that I want a penny of his money, but it will shut him up!"
I'm sure that Howells won't mind too much though if it means he gets his hands on the Bitcoin fortune, although he currently remains in the middle of a £495,314,800 ($627,775,410) civil claim against the Council in a last-ditch effort.
Bitcoin has dropped slightly in value over the past week after reaching an all-time high of $99.655.50, but it remains still the most valuable crypto coin by a significant margin.
