A man from the UK named James Howells is suing his local council to try to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC, currently valued around $647 million. And that’s precisely how much he’s suing them for—since he’s blaming them for his not having it.
Back in 2013, Howells’ then-partner mistakenly tossed out the hard drive along with a bunch of other garbage. At the time, Bitcoin was already worth a little bit less than £1 million—and the value of those coins has risen quite a bit in the years since.
Having done that myself admittedly, some people do that due to lack of electronics recycling in their area and simply not being aware of how to properly dispose of them.
Took a while before I learned that the bottle depot few blocks from my old place did electronics recycling, and where I’m from at least, they teach you how the municipal waste system works when you’re in elementary, but I don’t think they ever touched on electronics. Do remember them touching on chemicals like cleaners and whatnot.
While it’s better than not teaching kids at all, I believe in high school a refresher should be given to students in a general mandatory home economics course so that it’s touched on again when people are closer to entering adulthood and can learn more specifics of the system that they wouldn’t have understood before.