# That Missing Hard Drive with 7,500 Bitcoins is Now worth $72 Million



## Sasqui (Nov 27, 2017)

Oops... that'd create a little tension in the relationship



> According to The Guardian, he mined them on a Dell laptop for over a week and stopped mining because his girlfriend complained the laptop was too noisy and hot. In 2010, he accidentally spilled lemonade on his Dell laptop, so he dismantled it for parts. The hard drive in which the Bitcoins were in were kept in went to a drawer, in which it stayed for three years, until one day he had a clearout.



https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/missing-hard-drive-with-7500-bitcoin-now-worth-72-million/amp/


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## jaggerwild (Nov 27, 2017)

Aint NO LAP TOP gonna mine that much coin, certainly no old lappy. I call BS on this!


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## Sasqui (Nov 27, 2017)

jaggerwild said:


> Aint NO LAP TOP gonna mine that much coin, certainly no old lappy. I call BS on this!



I have no idea of the truth to this, but they say this in the article 





> Howells was an early Bitcoiner who mined 7,500 Bitcoins back in 2009 with his laptop – when the cryptocurrency was still easily mineable, and barely worth anything.



Edit:  Back in 2009/2010, BC was around $0.05 each.  So 7,500 coins would be worth about $375 ...or less.


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## ZenZimZaliben (Nov 27, 2017)

jaggerwild said:


> Aint NO LAP TOP gonna mine that much coin, certainly no old lappy. I call BS on this!



Well doesn't sound like you understand how Bitcoin Mining works then. Back in the day - say 2010 - the block chain was so small a common PC could generate 1 BTC in maybe a few hours. Now that we are 12.5 Million coins each coin adds to the block chain complexity...which is why you need a warehouse of computers each running at least 4 GPUs for mining..because it scales with each coin.


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## EarthDog (Nov 27, 2017)

jaggerwild said:


> Aint NO LAP TOP gonna mine that much coin, certainly no old lappy. I call BS on this!


2009 big guy... waaaaay different back then.


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## jaggerwild (Nov 27, 2017)

I didn't read it, my net is slow as fawk lately.


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## jboydgolfer (Nov 27, 2017)

Same happened to me. Lost email account access, lost bc wallet access. I had alost 14 bc in '08'ish. Not a fortune, but enough to be pissed about. Remembered a few months ago, kicking self in a$$

 Keep in mind this was when you could mine coins on a 6950 really well and they were also worth pennies not even it was like a fraction of a penny for a bit coin. $10,000usd/B¢ 

 That's the reason there's one behind my username and most of my accounts , The original was hacked and I lost access to them....i wish i knew the name of the wallet so i could atleast try to get the funds


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## Papahyooie (Nov 27, 2017)

Better have those wallet hashes backed up, hard copies written on paper in a safe, and memorize it to boot lol. 

I read an article about one guy that had a kind of genius idea... have the letters laser cut into a card-sized piece of metal stock. Include any "password" or pass phrase type stuff if you have one of those fancy hardware wallets. Put it in your document safe. The worst thing that could happen would be it gets stolen, and criminals aren't likely to take it anyway, not knowing what it is.


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## Jetster (Nov 27, 2017)

Well right now it's worth nothing


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## jboydgolfer (Nov 28, 2017)

There must be a boatload of people just like me who started doing the bc's years ago and just did it as a lark for a week or two and generated 10 or whatever bitcoins and then forgot about them because they were worthless ... i'll be honest the first thing I regretted after losing that email and all the things tied to it was my steam account because I had Grandtheft auto four on it


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## verycharbroiled (Nov 29, 2017)

jboydgolfer said:


> Same happened to me. Lost email account access, lost bc wallet access. I had alost 14 bc in '08'ish. Not a fortune, but enough to be pissed about. Remembered a few months ago, kicking self in a$$



back in 2012 or 13 i was experimenting with wallets sending various amounts of btc in and out of them. btc was around 5 or 10 bucks then. i transferred 5 btc to an armory wallet i had set up as a watch only wallet with a second offline computer as the actual wallet (airgap deal). screwed up somehow and the backup file i have only comes up as the watch only version. so every so often i pull that addy with its single 5 btc in transaction up in a block explorer and wave at it.

otoh i found an old paper wallet in a file cabinet i had forgot about a couple years ago and there was 5 btc in that. when i found it price was ~$800/btc maybe? kinda like finding 5 grand behind a sofa cushion 

i use a trezor now.


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## R-T-B (Nov 29, 2017)

jaggerwild said:


> Aint NO LAP TOP gonna mine that much coin, certainly no old lappy. I call BS on this!



I mined a quarter of a bitcoin back in 2011 in about a week on a laptop.  No BS here.



Papahyooie said:


> I read an article about one guy that had a kind of genius idea... have the letters laser cut into a card-sized piece of metal stock. Include any "password" or pass phrase type stuff if you have one of those fancy hardware wallets. Put it in your document safe. The worst thing that could happen would be it gets stolen, and criminals aren't likely to take it anyway, not knowing what it is.



Fun fact, my bitcoin and litecoin wallet public and (encrypted) private key are actually on a card of steel that has been laser etched.  I kept in my wallet until a few years ago when, being useless now, it became a burden at metal detectors.

I'd post pics, but would have to dig it out.  Maybe if someone tipped me, lol.



Jetster said:


> Well right now it's worth nothing



Knowing how hard drives do in landfills, it's probably never going to be either.


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## Kissamies (Nov 29, 2017)

I'm just wondering that is it possible to die when pissed off enough? If it is, that dude is surely RIP.


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## R-T-B (Nov 29, 2017)

9700 Pro said:


> I'm just wondering that is it possible to die when pissed off enough? If it is, that dude is surely RIP.



His story (losing millions in bitcoin) actually isn't all that rare.

What's weird is he pretty much knows where they are and still can't get them.


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## Sasqui (Nov 29, 2017)

9700 Pro said:


> I'm just wondering that is it possible to die when pissed off enough? If it is, that dude is surely RIP.



Or his girlfirend


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