Have you ever thrown something away thinking you didn’t want it anymore, only to regret it later?This happens to the most productive of us. But for James Howells of Newport, Wales, what he threw away was worth a lot more than his old favourite shirt. In 2013, he threw away an encrypted hard drive, mistaking it for some other device. This hard drive contained the personal key to 8,000 Bitcoins, which was worth about six hundred US dollars at the time. But when the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed, he soon learned that he had wasted around $6 million. Yes!
Yes, of course, he tried to recover the hard drive, which was worth millions at the time, but the challenge was that it was buried 3 to 5 feet underground at the Docksway landfill in Newport.
Howells made several attempts to access the cryptocurrency settlement. When the price of his missing wallet skyrocketed, he assembled a team of experts to locate the hard drive. He also constantly asked Newport City Council for permission to access the site and even presented them with a percentage of the missing Bitcoin if they found it, but had no luck.
After years of trying to engage with Newport City Council, Howells finally decided to sue them, demanding either access to the landfill or L495 million in compensation (about 600 million dollars). And guess what? In early January 2025, the High Court dismissed his case, ruling that there were no ‘reasonable grounds’ for the claim and no ‘realistic prospect’ of winning at trial.
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In accordance with current legislation, the hard drive becomes an asset of the municipality upon entering the landfill, and environmental entries save you from any attempts to excavate the site, as digging it up can release destructive ingredients into the environment.
And that is it. This is the finish of the tale of James Howells’ million-dollar hard drive. It is now buried deep underground, covered in tons of foul-smelling, smelly garbage, and there is practically not anything it can do about it.
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