HDD with 7500 Bitcoin thrown away in 2009 now worth $71m

Remember that HDD with 7500 Bitcoin someone threw away in 2009? Yeah, that's worth $71 million now.

@anthony256

Published Nov 26, 2017 10:15 PM CST
Updated Nov 3, 2020 11:53 AM CST

51 seconds read time

Now that Bitcoin has reached record heights of $9483, it made me remember the story of someone throwing away a HDD with a bunch of Bitcoin on it back in 2009.

HDD with 7500 Bitcoin thrown away in 2009 now worth $71m | TweakTown.com

The original story is that James Howells had 7500 Bitcoins in 2009, stored the HDD with the cryptocurrency on it until 2013, and then threw it in the trash. The story was picked up in 2013 as Bitcoin was reaching the then-dizzying heights of $1000, Howells at the time said he'd "never thrown a hard drive out before" had taken his PC apart as he spilled a drink on it.

He took the HDD out and threw it out amongst other hardware as party of a "clearout of old IT equipment", but not long after Howells said he took interested in Bitcoin and reached out to the dump where his rubbish ended up. The dump manager said that the HDD "could be 3 to 5 feet deep" in landfill, the size of a soccer field.

But now that Bitcoin is worth $9483, Howells would have $71,122,500 if he had that HDD. Who wants to go dumpster diving with me?

Anthony Garreffa

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.