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Comment on Man Trying to Buy Entire Landfill to Recover Lost Bitcoin Hard Drive

It takes a couple of clicks through to BBC articles, but it turns out that even if he were to find it, he has no legal right to it and also would have no legal right to mine the landfill.

But James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. It also said that its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0r0dvgpy0o

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Arbiter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Not to mention the fact the drive is almost certainly dead.

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- bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  If there was a chance of recovering a hard drive worth around $750mil, you bet your ass I’d exhaust every option possible.
  
  That said, there’s a pretty good chance the landfill owner and all their employees have been ransacking that place to beat him to it.
  
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  - Arbiter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I mean, there’s a chance you can win big at casinos too.
    
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  - FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    That said, there’s a pretty good chance the landfill owner and all their employees have been ransacking that place to beat him to it.
    
    They aren’t because, as I said, they can’t do it. And even if they found it, they couldn’t keep it.
    
    And the landfill owner is the local government.
    
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    bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    That’s assuming they’re following the letter of the law. If I worked there and happened upon that drive, and it turned out to be viable, I’d disappear very quickly.
    
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- OwlPaste@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  
  almost certainly
  
  You mean there is a chance 🤑 💰 /s
  
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- cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Plot twist, he does get exemption to dig it up, causing mass damage all around. He finds it. The board is completely busted, but it seems the platters are fine, so he pays some very expensive data recovery team to access the data. They manage to do it! Now he got all the files from the drive, in a safe place. He just have to find where the wallet is stored. Easy enough, he lucked out using a common software for it, so it’s well documented, and he retrieve the files. It costs an inordinate amount of money to get the rights to the landfill, to “convince” local authorities to allow the digging, to actually do the digging, to put the drive in a recoverable state, but finally, his wallet is in his hands! He inputs his password… which doesn’t work.
  
  That would be hilarious.
  
  (note: this is a fantasy scenario. I never bothered actually reading these articles, as it sounds like a stupid story, so there may be approximations there)
  
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  - Arbiter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Damn, cursing this man with a Twilight Zone existence.
    
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