UK Man's 12-Year Quest to Recover $900m Bitcoins Ends

Many will have heard the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, the computer programmer from Florida in the US, who famously paid 10,000 bitcoin (BTC) for two Papa John's pizzas back in 2010.

- Ciaran Ryan

In today's terms, those two pizzas cost $1.14 billion.

We've also heard of others who mined dozens or even hundreds of BTC in the early days and sold out when the price doubled to $12. Today, BTC trades at around $114,000 (about R2.1 million).

This latest story of lost BTC is a bit of a head scratcher. British IT engineer James Howells accidentally threw away his hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoin, now worth more than $900 million, 12 years ago.

He had been mining BTC for several years, back when thousands of people around the world were doing the same on their personal computers and it was worth just a few cents.

He tried for years to recover his hard drive from his local Newport landfill site, but to no avail.