The woman at the centre of the binned Bitcoin fortune has now shared her side of the story
A woman who accidentally chucked the key to her then boyfriend’s £569 million Bitcoin fortune has now revealed the unfortunate series of events wasn’t her fault.
Now most of us will have made the mistake of chucking our possessions away during a mass clear out, only to realise down the line that said item would’ve been pretty useful to keep around.
However I highly doubt any of us have either binned an item which would later set us back a whopping £569 million.
Unfortunately for Newport man James Howells, 39, this is exactly what happened when his then girlfriend did a tip run with the hard drive containing the Bitcoin fortune.
The tip in Newport, Wales where the hard drive is believed to be (SWNS)
Oh dear.
He claimed to have mined the cryptocurrency on his computer back in 2009, later forgetting about the venture. Now the 8,000 coins he mined have a value of £569 million – however there’s only one small problem.
The hard drive containing the ‘key’ to the fortune was chucked away at the local tip by his ex partner Halfina Eddy-Evans just under a decade ago. Which means the Welsh town is currently the subject of what is likely the world’s most expensive scavenger hunt.
As Howells is currently embroiled in a battle with the town’s council to get permission to dig up the landfill site, his ex Halfina Eddy-Evans has now spoken out to share her side of the story, revealing to MailOnline that she only chucked the items at his request.
“Yes, I threw away his rubbish, he asked me to,” she explained.
“The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away, saying ‘There’s a bag of rubbish here to be taken to the tip’.”
James Howells is determined to find his lost fortune, despite opposition from the council (SWNS)
Eddy-Evans has also added that she hopes Howells is able to recover the hard drive so he’ll stop bringing the subject up.
“I’d love nothing more than him to find it. I’m sick and tired of hearing about it,” she added.
“Losing it was not my fault.”
Howells previously claimed that Eddy-Evans had thrown the object away without his ‘permission or consent’ and that wasn’t supposed to end up in a landfill site.
“I still own the intellectual digital property located on the hard drive,” he said.
“I am either entitled to recover the property at full cost to myself or if the landowner refuses they it they pay me the value of my property.”
Should he recover the Bitcoin, Howells added that he give ‘10%’ of the fortune back to the town.
“It is crazy money that could do so much good for the area,” he said.
Featured Image Credit: SWNS/Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
