Is this a great husband or…
James Howell could be elected “Husband of the Year” for his patience and forgiveness of his young wife. Two problems: He is not married but his live-in girlfriend Halfina Eddy-Evans dumped a hard disk containing the key to about $720 million in Bitcoin in the garbage. Of course, they did not discover the error until the garbage bag had been taken to the landfill and buried. James says he can’t blame her, because he had asked her to tidy up the place. This was in 2013. The 8,000 bitcoins, which he says the key in the hard disk will lead him to, are now worth a staggering $720 million. In 2024 James is still fighting a losing battle against the Newport Council in Wales, UK which has repeatedly denied his request to search the rubbish pile for the fortune.
The tragedy happened because of a mix-up, according to him. Howells had two identical extranal laptop drives at home – one was blank and the other contained the keys to the bitcoins he minted in 2009, after weeks of experimentation. The drive was with Howells until the fateful incident in 2013. He had asked his girlfriend Halfina Eddy-Evans to throw out the blank hard disk, but as luck would have it what ended up in the trash pile was the other one. “Yes, I threw away his rubbish, he asked me to. The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away. I had no idea what was in it, but I reluctantly dropped it off at the local tip on the way home from going on the school run,” Halfina Eddy-Evans, told Mail Online. “I did it to help out. Losing it was not my fault. I’d love nothing more than him to find it. I’m sick and tired of hearing about it,” she said. “I have no claim on whatever money he could be worth. He is the father of my two sons, but I don’t want a penny of his money,” Halfina said.
James said the council has continually refused to engage with him, despite him pledging to donate 10% of the proceeds back into the local area*, on successful retrieval of the fortune. “I still own the intellectual digital property located on the hard drive,” James insists. “I am either entitled to recover the property at full cost to myself or if the landowner refuses it, they pay me the value of my property,” he says. “Newport City Council has been contacted multiple times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to be in our landfill site,” Daily Mirror has quoted a spokesperson of the council as saying. “The council has told Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area,” he said.
*$72 million.That is a dedicated environmentalist!
Bitcoin Bytes
How do you make a small fortune from investing in Bitcoin?
Start off by investing a large fortune in Bitcoin.
Wife: “I have a lot of my own clothes I’d like to donate.”
Husband: “Why bother? It’s easier to throw the clothes in the garbage can.”
Wife: “Don’t be selfish! There are so many poor people who have no clothes and are starving.”
Husband: ” Honey, anyone who fits into your clothing is not starving…”
If I had invested $1000 into Bitcoin today I would have…
No idea how it worked.
How can you tell who owns bitcoin at a party?
Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
November 29th Birthdays
1981 – Janina Gavankar, 1977 – Anna Faris, 1988 – Karen Gillan, 1979 – Lauren German
1940 – Chuck Mangione, 1955 – Howie Mandel, 1922 – Minnie Minoso, 1989 – Russell Wilson