Man, this James Howells story is absolutely insane. Like, the guy had 8,000 Bitcoins back in 2013—back then it wasn’t worth much, but then the price skyrocketed and turned into a fortune of $742 million. But here’s the catch: he simply threw away the hard drive with all of it inside.

Just think about what happened. James was an IT guy from Wales who bought Bitcoin when nobody took it very seriously. Then in 2013, in one of those moments you want to forget forever, he accidentally discarded the hard drive that held all that wealth. At that point, it was already about $8 million. Today? We’re talking about almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.

The worst part is that the drive is probably buried in a landfill in Newport, South Wales, under tons and tons of trash—we’re talking about 10,000 to 15,000 tons, really. James spent 12 years trying to get it back. He planned to use drones, robots, specialized teams to scour the area. It felt like a Hollywood movie.

But then the legal problems showed up. The local authorities simply wouldn’t let him dig there. Concerns about public health, environmental risks, that kind of thing. According to United Kingdom laws, anything that’s in a landfill belongs to that place—digging it up could release dangerous substances. James never managed to get the permission he needed.

After more than a decade fighting bureaucracy and bad luck, James Howells finally gave up. I mean, imagine losing access to $742 million because of some stupid accident and not being able to do anything about it? This story is basically a warning for us: backup, backup, backup. Always.