The crazy part of this story is that he spent a small fortune trying to recover these bitcoins but had he just moved on and started stacking again he would be rich by now. Let that be a lesson to those of you who need it. As long as you stay focused on trying to get something from your past instead of building new, you are wasting your life.
Still, props to him for trying and exhausting all means possible before finally giving up. It's one thing to try despite the odds, it's another to just say, "I'd just have to accept that it's gone. There's nothing I can do about it." You don't even have to believe that it's still there. You just have to do something.
After all, that was almost a billion. That's a huge wealth. That's worth looking for even if one has to literally dig mountains of garbage.