Woman by chance bins £3m Bitcoin fortune after throwing out USB ‘spring cleansing’
Ellie Hart tossed out a USB flash drive while she was spring cleaning but she didn’t realise it was where her partner Tom was keeping their crypto currency in ‘the worst mistake ever’
A couple say they are struggling to move on with their lives after accidentally binning their £3million Bitcoin fortune. Ellie Hart tossed out a USB flash drive while spring cleaning – without realising the device was where partner Tom kept their crypto currency.
The primary school teacher, 34, said: “It was just sitting in a drawer with old receipts, dead batteries and tangled wires. I assumed it was one of my school memory sticks and threw it out without thinking.”
Days later, Tom, 36, couldn’t find the flash drive, so the website developer quizzed Ellie about where it had gone.
She said: “He asked if I’d seen a little black USB stick he uses for his Bitcoin. I froze. I knew instantly. My heart just sank. I told him: ‘I think I threw it away.’ I felt absolutely sick.”
Ellie added: “We even emptied rubbish bags and tore open bin liners. There was this horrible mix of panic and hope, but deep down, I knew it was already too late.”
She described the blunder as “the worst mistake I’ve ever made”.
Savvy Tom bought the Bitcoin in 2013, when the currency was worth considerably less, explained the couple from Market Harborough, Leics.
Tom explained that over the years, his ‘e-wallet’ stored on the USB stick was now worth more than £3m, but without the device, the funds are inaccessible.
Speaking to Play Casino Online with Playcasino.com! Review Site 2025, Ellie said: “Tom has been amazing. He hasn’t shouted, he hasn’t blamed me, but the silence says it all. That money would have been our future – a house, a holiday, everything – and I threw it out with a handful of junk mail.”
She added: “It’s hard to move past something like this.
“You replay it constantly, the moment you picked it up, the second it landed in the bin. I’d do anything to undo it. I never thought something so valuable could look so ordinary.
“If anyone out there is keeping money, or anything important, on a USB stick, please label it, lock it away, don’t make the same mistake I did.”
A spokeswoman for Play Casino, which reports on digital trends and crypto currency culture, said: “It’s a heartbreaking reminder that digital fortunes can be lost in an instant.
“USB sticks, hard drives or devices storing crypto currency should be clearly labelled, securely stored and never left loose in a drawer.”
Experts recommend that Bitcoin owners store their currency in offline wallets, known as ‘cold storage’, with the added bonus that they cannot be accessed by thieves via the internet.
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