The end of cash: It’s a Bit harder to trace online currency, but not impossible

Pity Welshman James Howells. Back in 2009, when Bitcoin was in its infancy, the IT worker ‘mined’ 7,500 Bitcoins on his home computer.

They were so cheap as to be almost worthless at the time, but by November 2013, their value had risen to more than $1,200 each.

By then however, Howells had done some spring cleaning and had inadvertently dumped the hard drive on which all that value had been stored.