$250 MILLION of Bitcoin lost, an ETF could have prevented this! 

Richard does stuff like this so well. Glad the team are going into different areas and doing new stuff, better than most stuff on TV atm.👍

I threw away $10 accidentally once and that still bothers me

With the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, it's widely anticipated that Bitcoin's price will soar past $100k. I feel compelled to capitalize on this opportunity immediately. I'm eager to invest my $500k in cash savings, which are currently losing value due to inflation. However, I'm concerned: is it too late to maximize profits at this point?

This story has been told over and over, but never has anyone done so in such great detail or actually involved the guy in question. My respect to Richard Hammond and everyone else who was involved in the making of this video!

Best of luck to him tbh, sounds like he's got a solid plan and it's in the interest of a lot of people that he succeeds now.

Richard is a ledgend. A proper journalist. Reminds me of louis theroux. He’s just genuinely interested in the stories and follows along and gets fully involved. I can imagine him putting on his gloves and actually searching the dump to help the guy.

I was homeless.....now ima truckdriver my life wont ever make THAT much money but pulling yourself up is a genuine feeling

Not something I expected hammond to be doing tbh, but I'm all for it. I think like many people here, the trio could do literally anything and I would be interested in it, the way they speak, articulate their words and quick laughs, makes any point of conversation interesting.

If perseverance was a person, it would be this guy

I love this! Richard is a excellent presenter on whatever topic he covers

An interesting video from Hammond and his team. I'm starting to like this channel. Well done chaps.

Hammond's curiosity and compassion really brings a wonderful resonance to this oft told tale.

It would be a bit cruel if, when he finally finds the drive, the value dropped to about 20p..

I was also involved in bitcoin very early on. However I withdrew my balance as I didn't think it was going anywhere. I had forgotten all about it until I checked my account many years later. The 3 pence I had left in my account had turned into £460. Not joking. I hated myself for a while. Now I don't live my live with any regrets.

It's like searching for a ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶a̶y̶s̶t̶a̶c̶k̶ harddrive in a landfill.

Successful people don't become that way overnight. What most people see at a glance- wealth, a great career, purpose-is the result of hard work and hustle over time. I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life..

This geezer put together his own justice league

I really hope he gets it. That would just be an incredible story

It's an interesting story, but he's operating off of a LOT of assumptions: It is in a recoverable condition; It is capable of being positively identified; It hasn't been scavenged already; The city could actually make use of the data on it. The man is basically hoping to win the lottery a second time.

That was interesting, hoping to see more content of this caliber on this channel. And it reminded me of my own bitcoin encounter in the early days of it, where I dabbled into mining it, saw how awful slow it is after an unknown fraction of a full bitcoin and gave it up. He went way further and still has nothing to show for at this point - but I wish him luck in recovering his wealth! Now, please excuse me while I go to the basement and dig up some old harddrives, there may be some small change left somewhere... 😅

I do hope he gets it back and it all works out for him, cant imagine what that must feel like to have that much money just sitting in a landfill and not being able to get it.

So impressive that James is persisting and not only that but has gathered this amazing team and plan and vibe despite this unfortunate accident.

I would love another interview with him after he's found it and the bitcoins have been recovered.

I hope he's able to find the hard drive and, help the town out. It's a great suggestion that, the whole world was there when it went wrong, the whole world should be there, when it finally goes right. Best wishes, from AMERICA.

And then you remember that Hammond is actually a great presenter !

Just remember everyone he’s made a pledge. Doesn’t mean it’s a donation lol

Hammond is better at presenting this sort of “outside the box” tv than Top Gear. His science/engineering shows are brilliant too

Best of luck to James! This is a fascinating and frustrating story, I hope the plan comes together! Loving this channel with Hammond and May, hoping to see Clarkson too! will watch anything those three present :)

I remember hearing about this on the news. Very interesting. Best of luck to him. Great job to Mr. Hammond and the crew.

As an information hoarder (as I call myself) I find it unbelievable that he didn’t triple check his hard drives before tossing them.

If you have a hundred thousand funds in your name, you're literally invincible because nobody can touch your funds

5:15 the Newport landfill specialist looks exactly how you would expect him to look

That's 500 Million Dollars right now

I really hope that he finds it, it will a modern day treasure hunt!

One of the first guys in and tossed the hard drive in 2013. Even if he tossed it I don't get why he is not pretty well off now. 2013 the price was at $10 approx which was a huge jump from the price when he started. What is the story on how he has not still done out pretty well on bitcoin living through the $10 to $60,000? Had he mined or purchased a small number of coins back after he tossed it he would still easily have made millions from a very small investment.

If you gave the people of Newport a load of money, they’d probably just do the sensible thing and move

That drive, even if found, is beyond saving. Crushed and 9 years in a landfill...

9 years of waste? That is a massive amount of cubic trash. I wish this guy the best of success.

I kinda miss when this channel was just James May locking his 20-something-year-old employees in his basement force-feeding them various sandwiches.

Love this! Hammond is a perfect presenter - and I really hope the council see the worth in them agreeing to the rescue mission !

Resilience personified

Are we going to get updates? i.e. the council's decision? what deal was struck? what is the likelihood of the hard drive being recoverable? do they know that the drive is definatley at that site? how long are they prepared to dig with no results? and who pays for all the work done if they come up empty?

Also worth a note is here is the value of the forked chain coins. his Bitcoin Cash (BCH) balance is also worth ~$1 million alone.

This guy said in a different interview he threw away his laptop away but thought he backed everything up on his new computer, but on this interview he says he threw his wrong hard drive away 🤔

I do hope he'll get the hard drive back. BTW you should film the search. I would totally watch that.

"his" coins? He threw away the harddrive. Once the trash company picked it up they now owned it. If he ever finds it, he will spend it all on legal fees.

Well, he was sloppy and he still is. Leaving his computer unlocked in front of strangers (4:08), that's the first thing you should learn not to do.

Fascinating. I'll definitely be following this story.

This is ultimately about the intersection between hard probabilities and the psychology of hope. In this case, the near certainty is that this object is lost forever (probably destroyed long ago). If the hope was truly connected to the probability, then this person would have been able to move on long ago, regretfully but rationally. However, because of the size of the potential reward, the probability has been ignored, so hope has mutated into obsession. Obsession often leads to the most fatally dangerous human demon of all: despair. Despair is the most destructive state of mind of them all. It leads to...well, I won't say what it leads to here because it's too horrible for most people to contemplate. Let it go.

i hope this guy finds it one day that would be dope

If successful, it will be close to a miracle. Wish this gentleman all the luck.

He took mining bitcoin to another level

By the time he finds it his bitcoin will be worth about 100 bucks....lol

Well, a video about cryptoscam here was one of the least expected by me tbh

Had a lol when at the end of the video, you see the pop up for *check this out" and it's James May and weird sandwiches hahaha

This is brilliant. I followed this story from the beginning and it's great to see you cover it. really enjoying the diversified content, keep up the great work.

Really enjoyed this video, getting to know unique and stories in a more personal way makes this super interesting, can't wait to know of they find it

Where I think this goes wrong, is up front offering everyone 50 quid. Those that don't care about the money don't need the offer of it. Those that do care about the money will say "why only that much?"

Its just like the other guy I think in the US; he encrypted his hard drive and forgot the password. He's at peace with it having 1 more password try before it fully locks itself knowing that money never was in his hands.

He's "learned to deal with it"? The guy is still trying to put together an $11 million plan to look for his rusty hard drive. Guy clearly can't let it go

It would be quite a story if he gets it back. This story goes deeper into the crux of our system though, the amount of years this guy has put into this and the expertise involved just to recover something that is in real world terms worth nothing is crazy. He mined some bitcoin 9 years ago for a week was it? Society and our economic system is built to prioritise this kind of value rather than real world use value that will actually benefit society.

like how hammonds daily driver is a ford pickup he is a really down to earth chap

3:00 why throw away both/either of them if they could've been so important? they're already incredibly small and not space consuming. poor fella made a dumb decision. I feel for him.

Garbage is sorted. Metal items are separated and destined for remelting / recycling. This HDD is not there because it does not exist anymore.

The landfill is the only place crypto belongs. Well done lad

This bloke needs to move on with his life

I hope he finds it but the giant claw picking up the scrap metal is an electromagnet. In my mind, thats enough power to wipe the data off the drive.

B,S. You don't accidentally throw away your hard drives, especially one that important.

My biggest concern if I were the city council, would be that less than a month ago there was a crypto crash which dropped the value of that hard drive down by nearly $70M USD. How much do they estimate the total cost of this endeavor to be? How much of it is already promised to other parties? How far would crypto have to crash before his partners pull out and leave the city with a very expensive mess to put right.

You'll definitely find it pal its not a case of if but when . genuine chap

Bitcoin is going to totally valueless anyway, in a few more months! 🤣

Even if he finds the hard drive, there's no way that it's going to be preserved enough to extract the data.

Get richard and may to go on Beardmeatsfood podcast!

i love richard man so versatile what a story

The guy who sold 10K Bitcoin for two large delivered pizzas doesn’t regret his trade.

Is there any update on this story?

I really love how diverse the content got with the rebrand. Really keeps the channel interesting

I met someone that brought drugs using Bitcoin . Over a million dollars worth of Bitcoin went up his nose. I told him i would buy Bitcoin (then at 30k usd) . At least you can now turn it into a success story 😅 Rather than for ever thinking what could be.

I'd leave the bit about making a 'crypto mecca' out of your presentation to the council tbh.

RICHARD HAMMOND 👏👏👏👏❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Seems suspicious that anyone that into computers would just throw a hard drive out.

They said the AI would scan for something the size and shape of a HDD, they also said the drive was in a plastic bag .....

$500m now ..

if he told the people who run the dump he wanted to go looking for it 8 years ago and they told him he cant, as soon as he left you know they went out looking for it and if they found it there not going to say.

Typical Apple user. I bet he still doesn't make backups.

It's so reminiscent of efforts to recover sunken cargo, pledging gold and gems to the investors who help you raise up the sunken ship.

It's a pipe dream. The trash is crushed. And the rain would have destroyed it years ago anyway.

$567 MILLION today

What's ironic is that if it works out, he will probably be wealthier than if he didn't threw it away and cashed out asap.

If he threw it away then he gave up its ownership.

I love people trying to re-invent money. Whenever someone says they will pay me in bitcoin, i say "cash only".

So the answer to "What next" turns out to be trivial clickbait dross, I'd hoped for something more interesting.

Keep us in The loop on this. Would love to know if he finds it and if the data can be retrieved.🤞🏻

They might have had a very different attitude if you said, 'if we find it, you can keep half!' $125 million is still a ridiculous amount of money.

I'm curious what happened next? Does anyone know about it plz??

Although, i have no issues him doing a legal challenge for an injunction, the question is, once you throw something away, can you claim it back if it goes up in value later on even if someone else claims it? because if you discard something, you give up ownership of it. Secondly, if it was valued at $1.4 million dollars at the time of disposal , wouldn't you check before you throw it away? because people don't get careless if big money is involved. To sum it up, i think legally, he could lose the case for the injunction because if it was granted, it'll open up a can of worms for similar cases. Personally, I think that he didn't have it in the first place and made it up to gain notoriety because people have done it in the past for very little. Who agrees/disagrees?

I can imagine a guy just finding it on the ground

was not expecting this.

The treasure of Sierra Madre

If ONLY he'd written his recovery phrase or private key down! It's not actually ON the hard drive, it's still on the blockchain...