Featured Image Credit: BBC News/CNBC Television
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Money, Technology, Wales, UK News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Money, Technology, Wales, UK News
I think we can all agree that losing any amount of money can be devastating.
Whether it's losing $10 after leaving a note in your jeans pocket and putting them in the washing machine, or losing $1 million on a World Cup bet (cough, Drake) - money is money.
And one guy to experience this first hand is James Howells, who thew away millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.
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In 2013, Howells, from Newport, Wales, accidentally threw out the hard drive which contained 8,000 Bitcoin.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that since then Bitcoin has become huge and 8,000 Bitcoin now estimates to be worth a whopping $190 million.
But, going off today's market summary, it's actually worth a hell of a lot more.
As of February 24, 8,000 Bitcoin translates to £322,597,667 ($409,021,599). Of course, cryptocurrency rates are extremely turbulent, so this could easily change tomorrow.
Whether it's $190 million or $409 million, it's worth a hell of a lot either way. With this in mind, Howells has been on a decade-long mission to relocate his lost hard drive, and is now said to be turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help him find it.
So far his local council has proved unhelpful in locating his lost hard drive and has denied him access to the landfill site where it might be.
But Howells thinks he's managed to 'narrow down' whereabouts it's buried.
"I've narrowed down the area where I need to dig, based on the amount of time that's gone by," he said.
"It's a disused section of the site - 100,000 tonnes of a total 1.4m tonnes. I'd then take the landfill to a unit where it'll be placed on a conveyor belt and subjected to an AI scanning system.
"And if the AI recognises anything that looks like a hard drive it'll be flagged and removed."
The IT engineer studied aerial photographs of the landfill site to try and pin-point an approximate location of the hard drive and believes he's narrowed it down to a 200-square-meter area.
Howells thinks that it would take between nine to 12 months for the AI scanning system to find it, but already has 'some of the best people in the excavation business involved' and hopes the council will give him the go-ahead to begin his search.
Apparently Newport Council has environmental concerns about the excavations. Howells promises that he will do the dig in an 'environmentally friendly way', however.