Attempts by a years-old British man to take a hard drive containing around $750 million worth of bitcoin to a landfill have been hit by a new setback.
James Howells, 39, launched a legal bid to force Newport City Council in southern Wales to let him search the local dump where he believes the fortune is located. This week, a judge rejected that bid.
“I believe the details of the complaint do not show moderate grounds to pursue this matter,” Judge Keyser KC said Thursday.
Howells says that in 2013, he threw a computer’s hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins into a trash bag, which ended up in the landfill. He said that he mistook the hard drive for the same disk he had, which was blank.
As of Saturday morning, the price of bitcoin was hovering around $94,600, bringing the cryptocurrency’s price on the hard drive to about $757 million.
For the past decade, Howells has attempted to access the landfill to move the hard drive. He continually asked Newport City Council if he could get in and offered to give him a percentage of the cryptocurrency if he found it.
Howells previously told Business Insider he thought it was achievable to search the 110,000 tons of garbage through a combination of human sorters, robot dogs, and an artificial-intelligence-powered machine trained to look for hard drives on a conveyor belt.
In his attempts to obtain the bitcoin he mined in 2009, Howells has attempted to sue the council for the legal right to access the site or for £495 million ($608 million) in compensation.
However, Judge Keyser KC ruled in the council’s favor on Thursday, striking out Howells’ claim.
The ruling accepted the council’s argument that existing legislation meant the hard drive had become the council’s asset once it entered landfill.
“I also believe that the complaint would have no realistic chance of good fortune if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling explanation as to why it deserves to be resolved at trial. ”
Howells told crypto site BraveNewCoin that he was disappointed by the judge’s decision.
“I’m disappointed I wasn’t allowed to go to trial, but I was encouraged when the ruling said the board would possibly own the physical hard drive, but I still own the bitcoin,” Howells said.
“Until a higher court tells me no, I will continue to fight,” he said. “Even if I never physically get those bitcoins back, I will find a way to get something out of them. “
Gonna