If you ever look at the current price of bitcoin and kick yourself that you didn\'t invest in the early days and make your fortune, thank your lucky stars that you aren\'t James Howells.

The Mystery of the Missing Hard Drive

James Howells is an IT professional from Newport, Wales, who began mining bitcoin in 2009 when the cryptocurrency was in its infancy. When the laptop he had used to mine the bitcoins malfunctioned, and he removed the hard drive which contained the bitcoin private keys and kept it safely stored away in a desk drawer so that if the value of bitcoin ever did rocket, he could cash out and retire to a Caribbean island. 

However, in 2013 when he was clearing out his house, he accidentally disposed of the hard drive at his local landfill site, and it was buried under tons of other household waste. The 7,500 bitcoins on the hard drive were worth around $130 when Howells disposed of them. Today, they would be worth around $82 million.

Howells has attempted to get permission to dig up the landfill site so he could try to locate his missing millions. Unfortunately, local authorities have denied his request.