Man Who Accidentally Threw Away $500 Million Bitcoin Fortune Sues To Dig Up Lost Hard Drive

A British man who mistakenly discarded a hard drive with a trove of Bitcoin on it has launched a legal claim against a local council as a last-resort effort to be able to search for it in a landfill site.

James Howells, a 39-year-old IT engineer from Newport, Wales, accidentally discarded the hard drive containing the cryptographic “private key” needed to access and spend his BTC in the trash in 2013.

The Quest To Find 8,000 BTC Buried In A Dump

After all these years, James Howells is still confident he can recover his long-lost Bitcoin.

According to the news website WalesOnline, Howells has repeatedly requested the proprietors of the landfill where his Bitcoin hard drive ended up — permission to search the garbage dump– but his pleas have been “largely ignored”.

He is now suing the Newport council over local landfill access, claiming £495 million ($647 million) in damages — representing the peak value of his lost Bitcoin.

It’s not hard to imagine why Howells would want to retrieve the hard drive. Bitcoin prices have skyrocketed since 2013, hitting an all-time high near $74,000 in March. He mined $1 million worth of Bitcoin in 2009, which at today’s prices, would be worth around $527 million. He says the only way to regain access to these Satoshi-era coins would be through the hard drive he threw in the trash 11 years ago.

Council Rejection To Excavate

The case is now headed to a courtroom in December, but Howells, per the report, said he aims to leverage the council into agreeing to an excavation of the site to avoid a legal fight.

Howells has already promised to fund the excavation project, which would take about 18 to 36 months. Nonetheless, the council has rejected requests of the organized dig, citing environmental concerns.

“I’m still allocating 10% of the value for the council even though they have been problematic throughout,” Howells added. “That would be 41 million pounds based on today’s rate but in the future, it could be hundreds of millions.”

The local landfill has been flagged for breaches of its environmental licensing permit in the past, including high levels of asbestos, methane, and arsenic. The Newport Council claims excavating the site could negatively impact the surrounding area and argues that its operation follows rigorous monitoring protocols.

Many crypto users acknowledge Howells’ actions as a telltale story of the significance of keeping track of one’s crypto stash, whether by securely storing private keys or a physical hardware wallet.