In 2013, a British IT specialist James Howells somehow conspired to throw a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoin into a municipal dump. Back then it was worth less than $1 million. Now that same bitcoin stash is worth about $750 million and Howells wants to buy the entire landfill site.
Obviously, the idea is to recover the drive. Perhaps equally obviously, Howells himself doesn’t have the resources to buy the landfill site from the local government council in Newport, Wales, who currently own it.
Howells says he, “would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”
It was in November of 2013 that Howells realised his mistake made earlier that summer. Ever since, he’s been battling to be given access to the landfill site to search for the drive.
Howells escalated his efforts to recover the drive in 2023, threatening to sue the council for half a billion dollars in damages. That was followed last year by an attempt force a judicial review of council’s decision to deny access to the site.
Late last year at a preliminary court hearing, Howells’ lawyers argued that the location of the drive had been narrowed down so a small section of the site and recovering it would not require widespread excavation.
However, Newport council lawyers said Howells had no legal claim and that, “anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council’s ownership.” Moreover, the council claims that, “excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
In the event, the judge sided with the council and Howells’ claim was dismissed. But with so much money potentially at stake, perhaps unsurprisingly Howells isn’t giving up.
Notably, Howells’ story seems to have drifted over the years. Early media reports including the one linked above quote Howell explaining how he threw the drive away following an office clean up. “You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself ‘that’s a bad idea’? I really did have that,” he’s quoted saying in 2013.
More recent reports have shifted the narrative, Howells being said to have “placed” the drive in a black plastic bag in the hall of his house, only for his then partner to have mistaken the bag for trash and disposed of it.
That shift in narrative may have legal ramifications. Perhaps if Howell can show the drive was never meant to have been disposed of, it will help his cause. For now, it clearly hasn’t, as the courts won’t hear his case in full whatever his original intentions with the drive.
In the meantime, Newport council does not appear to be interested in selling the site to Howell and his purported investors. Where it all goes from here, who knows. But as long as bitcoin’s price keeps on soaring, this surely won’t be the last we’ll hear about this lost digital treasure. There’s nearly a billion dollars supposedly sitting in a dump and that’s going to be very hard to ignore.