James Howells has been trying for more than ten years to find a wallet containing 8,000 bitcoins currently worth more than 740 million euros. He suspects that it is on a hard drive in a landfill site in South Wales. Howells had tried to get the council of the Welsh city of Newport to allow him to search the garbage. After an unsuccessful lawsuit, he now wants to buy the landfill site, according to various media reports.
Anzeige
City council does not want to help
Howells has been asking the city council for help in recovering the hard disk for years and had even offered to split the money with the authority and give ten percent –, but to no avail. The hard drive had become the property of the city council when it was dumped at the landfill site. In May 2024, Howells tried to sue: either the defendant hands over the hard drive or the plaintiff receives compensation of 495 million pounds, according to the court document. However, a High Court judge, Keyser KC, ruled in favor of the council in January and rejected the claim. According to Keyser KC, it is also unlikely that the hard drive will be found in the tons of waste.
According to the BBC, the landfill is now to be closed. The authority has been granted planning permission for a solar farm on part of the site. This came as a surprise to Howells, as he was told by the city that closing the landfill – so he could search for the hard drive – would have a negative impact on the people of Newport. In 2013, the hard drive containing the Bitcoin wallet was accidentally lost during cleanup.
(mack)