I understand why he feel that way. But he should have protected it at first before when it was still on his hands. The other big time holders were able to hold their Bitcoins and held it for several years. And that's the reason why they are now enjoying the money that they've sold for it. Although this is really painful and should be a very life changing story but then now on an opposite manner.
The guy messed up; he failed to protect it, but we can’t also completely blame him too. Back then, he didn’t know how valuable bitcoin would be today because if he did, he should not have kept it where the girlfriend could easily get rid of it without thinking twice, just like the girlfriend can’t get rid of his valuable documents, certificates, etc. They’re two are just to share the blame; it’s not a one-sided something.
I agree, both of them have the fault but the guy obviously know that there's something with BTC but his girlfriend probably don't like his obsession towards it back then.
If others are not going to read your entire post, they will think that the guy will use robot in searching.
This what I thought as well before reading to the end and saw that he already used robot to find but no avail, sometimes we should be very mindful on how we draft our post as it could be misleading.
But it seems that everyone is reading it thoroughly first and that's a good sign.
However, 12 years of 8,000 bitcoin lost can't be easily recovered such an easily way, okay, what if that hard disk or whatever has been crushed or melted to other steel do he think he would recover it? No! I don't think this is possible because he can't in anyway recovered what has been misplaced for 12 year now.
He's put some hope in it because of the value that it has got. But there is no hope on it and the search is over and he's finally given up. Everyone cheered for him but I think that he can step up again with all of the exposure that he's got, it can be used for capitalizing his social media presence.