Many Bitcoin investors who purchased crypto during its early days didn’t take BTC quite seriously. Stories about early investors losing their keys and forgetting their seed phrases are aplenty on the internet.
A majority of these investors would have made a fortune today if they had their Bitcoins in place but missed out on the wealth due to their reckless behavior. James Howells, from Wales, made headlines previously after losing 8,000 Bitcoins in 2013. Howells had discarded his hard drive which contained 8,000 BTC in a local landfill nine years ago.
Since then, his efforts to retrieve the hard drive from the local dump have all but failed. However, things look a little brighter now as Howells collaborated with a service company that will deploy two robot dogs to dig up the lost Bitcoins.
The robot dogs cost $75,000 each and are powered by batteries. The dogs’ mission is to excavate the local landfill which is 110,000 pounds of rubbish and find the lost hard drive that contains Bitcoins. Only one robot dog will search the landfill at a time as the other dog will be kept for charging. The two robot canines will work on shifts and be on 24/7 to do the job. The mission also involves many engineers who would man the robot dogs on their search for the drive.
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Will the Robot Dogs dig out the Lost Bitcoins?
The mission of James Howells is backed by two venture capitalists Karl Wendeborn and Hanspeter Jaberg. The deal is that he would pay $11 million if the discarded hard drive is found in the dump. The retrieval process will be worked on for the next 18 months and up to a maximum of three years.
Howells is confident that the hard drive containing 8,000 BTCs will be recovered this time. “It’s a needle in a haystack, and it’s a very high-risk investment,” said VC Jaberg to Business Insider.
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The task is serious business containing a lot of effort over the years for both the robot dogs and engineers. Considering the sophisticated technology and manpower used in the mission, it won’t be a surprise if the discarded hard drive is retrieved.
Also, Howells’ lost 8,000 Bitcoins are now worth $168 million and could shoot up before the next three years.