“It’s clearly a needle in a haystack and it’s a very, very risky investment,” Swiss venture capitalist Hanspeter Jaberg told Insider.
Mr Howells will make two proposals to council authorities based on the amount of landfills they will let him control.
He has assembled a team of eight experts, all of whom specialize in landfill excavation, waste management and data extraction, including a consultant who worked for a company that recovered lost data from the black box of the crashed Columbia space shuttle. . .
The huge budget includes security provisions in the form of two robotic ‘Spot’ dogs that record CCTV patrols in the evenings so that no other opportunistic treasure hunters can access the search site at night.
A mechanical arm will be used to filter through the waste together with local pickers.
“We’re trying to take this project to a full commercial standard,” the 36-year-old told Insider.
“We don’t want to harm the environment in any way. We want to leave everything in a better condition.”
‘We can’t help him with this’
Despite the fact that the hardware has been in landfill for nearly a decade, the former IT worker is confident it can be restored to working order.
He told Insider that he estimates there’s an 80-90 percent chance of successfully retrieving the bitcoin, provided a part called the “saucer” — a disk made of glass or metal that holds the data — isn’t. cracked.
Mr Howells says he then plans to “build a solar or wind farm on top of the landfill once the project is complete” in an effort to alleviate the environmental concerns about the project.
If the money is recovered, Mr Howells says he would keep 30 percent of the bitcoin and divide the rest among his team and local causes.
A spokesperson for Newport City Council said: “Newport City Council has been approached a number of times since 2014 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware alleged to contain Bitcoins.”
“The first time was several months after Mr. Howells first realized the hardware was missing.”
“The cost of excavating the landfill, storing and treating the waste can run into the millions of pounds – with no guarantee that it will be found or that it will be in good condition.”
“The council has also told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavations are not possible under our permit and that excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
“Even if we could agree to his request, who would bear the cost if the hard drive was not found or was so damaged that the data could not be recovered.”
“We have therefore been clear that we cannot help him in this matter.”