A man who lost $176 million worth of bitcoin in a dump wants to use a pair of $75,000 robot dogs in his master plan to get it back
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- James Howells threw out a hard drive to a landfill in 2013 that contained 8,000 bitcoins.
- He has an $11 million business plan to excavate the drive and recover the bitcoins.
- The plan includes budget for two robotic dogs from Boston Dynamics.
James Howells, the man who made headlines after he lost 8,000 bitcoins on a hard drive that he accidentally threw away, has a master plan to get his cryptocurrency back.
Howells threw out the hard drive containing the bitcoins in 2013. It ended up in Howells' local landfill in Newport, Wales.
In a new interview with Insider, Howells said he has put together an $11 million business plan to recover the hard drive, the value of which stands at roughly $176 million at time of writing — although the value of bitcoin can fluctuate.
Howells told Insider his plan budgets for two robotic "Spot" dogs from Boston Dynamics.
Boston Dynamics' Spot robot first became commercially available in June 2020, when it hit the market at $74,500 per unit.
Since then Spot has been used to perform scans for construction projects, herd sheep, and patrol parks in Singapore to enforce social distancing.
Howells told Insider the robots would be used both for security as roaming CCTV cameras and to scan the ground to search for his missing hard drive.
He said the project would require two dogs so one could be on patrol while the other charges its battery.
Howells said if the project does go ahead, he would like to name the robotic dogs "Satoshi" and "Hal."
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym for the person or group of people who created Bitcoin, and Hal Finney was the first-ever recipient of a bitcoin transaction.
Howells told Insider he constructed his plan with the help of expert advisors and secured funding via two venture capitalists. He hopes it will help convince Newport City Council to allow him to excavate the landfill.
The council has consistently denied Howells access to the landfill since 2013, and his chances still look slim.
A council spokesperson told Insider there is "nothing that Mr. Howells could present to us" that could convince the council to let him access the site.
"His proposals pose significant ecological risk, which we cannot accept and indeed are prevented from considering by the terms of our permit," they added.