Woman accidentally threw out hard drive containing ex's access to $569 million Bitcoin fortune

A woman has spoken out after accidentally throwing away her ex's hard drive which gave him access to his $569 Bitcoin fortune.

Since Donald Trump’s election result, the value of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has soared, reaching its highest value since its inception on Friday 22 November at $98,739 USD each.

One person who won’t be revelling in the news is 39-year-old IT engineer James Howells from Newport, Wales, who had around 8,000 of the coins in 2009 that would today be worth around £618 million.

But, Howells no longer has access to Bitcoin, claiming that 15 years ago his former partner Halfina Eddy-Evans accidentally took the hard drive, which was in a bag, to a dump after mistaking it for rubbish.

However, Eddy-Evans has now hit back claiming that she only disposed of the bag because Howells had asked her to.

“The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away, saying ‘There’s a bag of rubbish here to be taken to the tip’,” she told the MailOnline.

“I had no idea what was in it but I reluctantly dropped it off at the local tip on the way home from going on the school run.

“I thought he should be running his errands, not me, but I did it to help out. Losing it was not my fault.”

For years, Howells has been on a campaign to try and track down the lost hard drive which he believes is in a landfill site in Newport.

Eddy-Evans, who shares two sons with Howells, admitted she hopes he finds it so “it will shut him up”.

She added: “I’d love nothing more than him to find it. I’m sick and tired of hearing about it.”

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