Well, it's definitely a tough situation for him. But hey, let's hope this serves as a valuable lesson for everyone else to back up their crypto wallets! Can't rely on trash dumps for safekeeping, that's for sure.

It makes me smile every time I try to imagine how he is going to search for that disk drive. How the hell he is going to find it? With metal detector? With a huge comb and search in every pile of garbage? By building a sort machine and examining manually every single metal or aluminium piece of trash ? The local bumps have already found his disk drive and sold it on a yard sale for few bucks, or have destroyed it and gave parts to metal collection point.

P.S. that junk yard was a perfect place to "hold bitcoin" Excellent hardware-trash wallet

I guess it serves not only as a cautionary tale in personal responsibility, but also a lesson to be careful about who you allow into your life.  It's surprising what a momentous impact they can have if you aren't both on the same page when it comes to money.

Choose your significant others carefully.

While I do understand that 8,000 BTCs is a lot of money (like a lot), still, requesting for the City Council to dig up a site may cause environmental effects that can potentially harm others. His mistake of throwing the hard-drive should be construed as negligence on his part for doing such thing. He just cannot blame the government for refusing to dig up on the site on the very same accident he did to himself.

This is just a desperate attempt to at least feel sorry for himself. Assuming that they indeed recover the drive, there is no guarantee that it may work; nor the drive containing all the files in a recoverable position.

I don't think there is any way he can get his Bitcoin back since he lost the hardware many years ago. He should have look for a way to get the hard drive when the scene was still early. Even though he don't want them to carry out work in the site, how does he think that he will be able to find the hard drive. Even though the hard drive is found, if not burnt, he might not still be able to get his Bitcoin because it would have been damaged and not able to recover the files that are there. I see this as a complain that can not yield any legal success because he can not blame anyone for his lost.

He is just trying to look for someone to blame, a scapegoat to his lost bitcoins that's why he had to do something. But I doubt that it will affect bitcoin negatively, on the contrary, it might highlight bitcoin again. And for those holders, they will really have to protect it at all cost and that be the one guy that will be desperate to search for it because of his stupidity and he should be enjoying it right now as a millionaire. Unfortunately he had to do everything to the point that he has to look for someone to blame including the city council which has nothing to do with BTC.

The thing is he is the one who trash his hard drive not the people who are just doing their work. He need to be reminded that we should be held accountable for the things that we are the one who have done that decision. Even he got the best lawyer in the world he will not win this case because he is the one who initiate it. He are being desperate to something and blame other people, it is understandable that losing bitcoin is very hard and painful but blaming to someone is not the right action.

This guy have been running for it for long time. The hard drive is very expensive. Atleast the corporation/council could arrange for the search and if they find it, further negotiations can be done. This will surely make way and mutually benefit. Its a big work that could last for years, and any decisions taken at the earliest seems to be good.

Here we can't blame anyone. Just on losing fee dollars worth bitcoin we find it difficult to digest and look for all the ways to get it back. 8000BTC is very big and the same getting added to the network from the idle state will have changes in the market as well. According to me, this will be successful only if any of the billionaire gets into the problem.

Talk about destroying your life for 8000BTC !

No amount of money is ever worth obsessing over, even if you held it in your hand at one point.

But anyway, running down the city council at the determent of the taxpayers living there is a pretty dick move. Now everyone knows who this guy is, and whose going to claim that he won't get scam letters and extortion if he ever recovers those BTC?

The more I think about it this guy's only hope for sanity is some sort of total amnesia. As far as I remember his story he was very early denied to search for his harddrive at times where it would've been quite likely to find the device intact, at least not yet corroded. With every year of time passed chances grow higher that corrosion destroys data and recovery of those diminishes.

To my knowledge (sorry, no sources) he got investors who gamble for their share of the 8k BTC treasure. Despite all odds there are serious trust issues if he were allowed to search the landfill. Everyone participating in the search likely knows what treasure might be left stored in the search item. Doing all by machines and today's common buzzwords only sounds like sci-fi and you don't want to miss your opportunity, you've got likely only one chance. Yada, yada, yada...

And yes, if he would find the device, could have the data restaured, he'd be such an exposed known person that he'd likely be subject to worse or worst things even if he could keep only a half, third or quarter of the treasure after paying out his investors.

What a sad life's story. Total amnesia and relocation is his only rescue, I guess.