Crypto miner battles to recover $749 million Bitcoin fortune mistakenly discarded in landfill
An early Bitcoin miner revealed that he lost a fortune totaling more than $700 million when his partner mistakenly disposed of a hard drive containing 8,000 coins in a landfill over a decade ago.
James Howells from Newport, Wales has appealed to his local council to allow him to search through the waste site to find the hard drive but has been denied permission thus far.
Howells is now taking legal action against Newport City Council, demanding access to his property or compensation for the value of the missing drive.
In 2009, the 39-year-old mined the coins himself after being drawn to the world of cryptocurrencies following the financial crisis in the previous year.
The Bitcoin were stored on a private key within Howells’s computer hard drive, which was mistakenly thrown out by his former partner in 2013.
Currently, with Bitcoin’s value reaching an all-time high of $93,637, the lost hard drive could potentially be worth over $749 million.
Howells expressed his frustration, stating, “This problem is never going to go away. This is always going to be a treasure hunt. The treasure is getting more and more valuable by the day, and that isn’t going to stop.”
In a desperate attempt to recover the hard drive, Howells even offered Newport City Council 25% of its value for community projects in exchange for their cooperation, but his requests were repeatedly denied.
Resolute in his pursuit, Howells reduced his offer to 10% of the drive’s value and is now prepared to pursue legal action seeking half a billion pounds if he is not granted access for the search.
On December 3, his legal team will present the case to a commerce court in Cardiff, arguing for Howells’s intellectual and property rights over the drive.
Despite multiple attempts since 2013, Newport City Council remains adamant that excavation is not possible due to environmental concerns and is vigorously opposing Howells’s claim.
Howells insisted that the council only needs to excavate a small area as he knows precisely when the hard drive was discarded, around the size of an iPhone.
He clarified that his primary goal is access to the landfill and not just monetary gain, expressing his desire for justice and the opportunity to invest the potential fortune in local businesses.
Howells emphasized the rarity and value of the untraded coins from 2009, which he believes could fetch significantly more than the current Bitcoin price if recovered.
Reflecting on the chain of events that led to the loss, Howells expressed regret for the initial mistake of misplacing the hard drive, his partner’s disposal error, and the council’s lack of engagement back in 2013.
He believes that if the council had cooperated at the time, they could have capitalized on the booming cryptocurrency market and benefitted financially from the situation.
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