A person who continues to search for an HDD containing bit coins worth 23 billion yen at a garbage disposal site invests 1.6 billion yen to hire a robot dog and an AI expert

Mr. James Howells, who lives in the United Kingdom, accidentally threw away an HDD with an amount of bit coins equivalent to about 23 billion yen at the time of writing the article, and continued to search for HDDs at a vast garbage disposal site for about 10 years. I'm here. Newly, Mr. Howells is planning to invest 10 million pounds (about 1.6 billion yen) in an HDD search strategy using AI and robot dogs.

Man who threw away £150m in bitcoin hopes AI and robot dogs will get it back | Bitcoin | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/02/man-hopes-ai-and-robot-dogs-will-help-recover-150m-in-bitcoin-from-landfill

At the time of writing the article, the existence of Bitcoin is well known to many people, but Bitcoin at the beginning of its appearance was a very minor existence and only small-scale mining was done by some PC enthusiasts. At the time of writing the article, when mining a large amount of Bitcoin, a factory-scale CPU or GPU is required, but mining virtual currency is as easy as it was in the early days, and at the time Howells was working on mining. It was possible to mine a large amount of Bitcoin in a short time even with a personal PC.

Mr. Howells worked on Bitcoin mining around 2009 and succeeded in acquiring 7500 BTC of Bitcoin. However, when Mr. Howells learned that 'Bitcoin is being traded at a very high price,' the HDD that had already saved Bitcoin was thrown away as garbage. In 2013, when Howells lost his HDD, 7,500 BTC was already valued at about 760 million yen, and it was not an amount that could be easily given up. After that, the price of Bitcoin continued to rise until 2021, and in November 2021, it was reported that Mr. Howells was continuing to search for an HDD that had ballooned to about 40 billion yen.

A person who threw away an HDD that stored 40 billion yen worth of bit coins as garbage continues to search for an HDD even after 12 years - GIGAZINE

The price of Bitcoin has been on a downward trend since November 2021, but the HDD lost by Mr. Howells is worth about 23 billion yen at the time of writing the article. Mr. Howells has been searching for HDDs at garbage disposal sites in cooperation with multiple people so far, but Mr. Howells will invest 10 million pounds to introduce AI and robot dogs into search operations. has been reported.

According to reports, Howells has hired two AI experts to develop HDD search AI. If the development of AI is successful, it will be possible for robots to pick up only HDDs from a vast garbage disposal site, which may dramatically improve the efficiency of searching for problematic HDDs. Mr. Howells also plans to introduce a robot dog to prevent outsiders from entering the HDD search area.

``We are building a balanced team of experts with a high level of knowledge,'' said Howells. We estimate that the HDD search will be completed in 9 to 12 months. “Once we clean up the landfill, we will install wind turbines to generate clean electricity and mine bitcoin for the people of Newport,” Howells said. I'm going to,' he said about the future prospects.

Mr. Howells continues to trade bitcoins while searching for HDDs, and is reported to have about 60 billion yen worth of bitcoins as of November 2021.