His opportunity to become a millionaire was lost. A British man who lost 800 million bitcoins in a landfill is prohibited from looking for them any further.
This time it looks like it’s final. After a dozen years of petitioning to dig up a landfill, James Howells will have to say goodbye to his 8,000 bitcoins, worth about $800 million today. A judge has barred him from digging into the dumpster that holds the hard drive that holds the keys to his bitcoin wallet.
James Howells’ complaint to Newport City Council in the UK is an act of near-desperation. It is almost a miracle that a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins has been sitting in a landfill for 12 years, under 170,000 tons of rubbish, and that it is still working.
But no one can blame the Brits for trying. He had 8,000 bitcoins that would have made him a millionaire today, and they ended up, quite literally, in the trash.
The story begins in 2009, and it’s pretty strange from the start. James Howells had a hard drive from his laptop that contained the private key to his bitcoin wallet stored in a drawer, along with a blank hard drive that he wanted to get rid of.
But when he woke up in the morning, his girlfriend had taken the box to the dumpster. As expected, things ended in a breakup.
What was even more bizarre was that it took so long for James Howells to ask the city council for permission to dig. It was this delay that closed all doors in his face.
James hired a team of experts, who determined that the hard drive containing the keys to the Bitcoin wallet must be located in an area of about 2,000 square meters, with about 11,000 tons of garbage on top of it. He asked the city council to dig it up.
The municipal council rejected their request, arguing that removing the garbage could create toxic clouds that would affect residents. In addition, it would force the landfill to stop operations for several days or weeks to allow for excavation work.
Finally, even if the hard drive is found, the chances of it not being crushed or damaged by the acids in the trash and the possibility of extracting data from it are very low.
For a decade, this former owner of 8,000 bitcoins has been trying to negotiate with the city council, even offering them 25% of the bitcoins, to no avail.
Desperate, he filed a complaint, asking a judge to let him dig or for the city to pay him the value of the bitcoins on the hard drive.
The ruling was announced yesterday, and as expected, the judge rejected his request, citing the same reasons the city council had already given. And there’s something even more important: according to the Pollution Control Act of 1974, anything that goes into a landfill becomes the property of the council. So if the hard drive turns up, the bitcoin will have a new owner…
And so James Howells’ dream of becoming a crypto billionaire was over. With Bitcoin worth around $100,000 today, his 8,000 bitcoins were worth around $800 million, which slipped through his fingers when his girlfriend one unfortunate day in 2009 threw away the wrong hard drive.