Nobody loves trash. The same cannot be said of James Howells. He has offered Newport city council 25% of his total bitcoins stashed in his hard drive which, unfortunately, is now buried under a ton of soil. How many bitcoins? Seven Thousand Five Hundred (7,500) shining nuggets of digital gold.
Based on today’s price of around US$35,000 per bitcoin, this works out to approximately US$262 million dollar worth of the cryptocurrency. Mr Howells has even the backing of a hedge fund to pay for the excavation.
Unfortunately, the city council does not have the permission to execute such a request leaving Mr Howells staring at his costly mistake.
Talk about “so near yet so far”.
