Who wants to get rich quick? Why not take a trip to a South Wales tip?

There was a fascinating story recently, about Newport man James Howells, who has been desperately trawling his local landfill site in the hope of finding his old and entirely indistinguishable PC hard drive, currently worth over £4million.

This multi-million-pound needle-in-a-haystack mission came about because his discarded disc drive contained a virtual wallet loaded with 7,500 Bitcoins, the fast-growing virtual currency; you probably didn’t even realise existed.

For a few, Bitcoins are a glorious glimpse into a world of regulation-free finance, but to critics they are an experiment that will never replace the current system and are fast-developing into a dangerous bubble.

In less than five years, a Bitcoin has gone from being worth nothing to its current record highs, in excess of £600 each.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if you had invested £12 in just two Bitcoins last January, you would now be sat on north of £1,200; a favourable result, when you consider you would probably have earned less than 10p in interest in your bank account.

Now consider that Welsh-man with 7,500 of these Bitcoins stored on his old hard drive and you’ll understand his near impossible hunt to track it down. Whether Bitcoin becomes the virtual currency of choice remains to be seen, but, as the infrastructure continues to develop, financial experts predict greater stability for deregulated finance.

They even got a tacit endorsement from the US senate, despite the FBI pointing out that they were largely used for illicit purposes. It’s not as easy as walking into a bank and setting up an account, but a quick web search revealed a handful of locals in Trowbridge and the surrounding area who were hoping to make a quick fortune by trading Bitcoins. Given the tremendous volatility of the market, it certainly is not a task for the weak-hearted.

The currency routinely rises and falls by as much as £300 in a single day of trading, making your investment a guaranteed rollercoaster ride. Today, I’ve invested in 0.05 Bitcoins and I’m already £0.74 up. This time next year, we’ll be millionaires ...