Picture this: It’s 2013. A guy named James Howells from Newport, Wales, is cleaning up his office and accidentally throws out an old hard drive. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
Stored on that hard drive were the digital keys to 8,000 Bitcoins. Back then, Bitcoin was worth around $130 each, a solid chunk of change. But today? One Bitcoin is worth about $122,000, which means James accidentally trashed almost $1 billion. With a “B.”
🗑️ It all went to waste
James’ Bitcoin passkey is buried somewhere under 110,000 tons of garbage in the city dump. For more than a decade, he’s begged officials to let him search.
He offered to foot the entire bill, buy the landfill, use high-tech, robot-assisted excavation tools and split the recovered Bitcoin with the city. He even lined up investors and engineers. But the city said no. Again and again. Too messy, too expensive, too risky.
So now, he’s doing something completely wild.
🪙 Trying to create interest
James just launched a new cryptocurrency called Ceiniog Coin (that’s “penny” in Welsh).
Here’s how it works: The 8,000 Bitcoins James lost are still technically tied to his crypto wallet. They’re frozen in time. No one can access them without the key on that hard drive.
So James is offering Ceiniog as a kind of tribute meme coin, tied to the legend of the missing landfill billion. Buyers of the coin are essentially investing in his story.
🦄 Dump and dumpster
Think of it like this. A kid loses a super rare Pokémon card, but he somehow believes it’s still part of his collection. Then he makes new Pokémon cards based on that one and sells them to anyone who believes the card is real. That’s Ceiniog in a nutshell.
Do I think it’s a solid investment? Nope. Unless that hard drive rises from the landfill like a phoenix, it’s a clever marketing stunt. If you see it advertised online, pass.
At the very least, this story is proof you should always double-check the trash before you take it to the curb. I’m investing in stocks. Beef, chicken and vegetables. I hope to become a bouillonaire. I think it’s a souper idea. (Sorry about all that.)
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