Man who threw away hard drive containing Bitcoin worth £500m told hope is not lost

James Howells, 39, says his dreams of a fortune disappeared a decade ago when his then partner, Halfina Eddy-Evans, chucked out a black bin bag containing the computer drive.

A man whose partner threw away his hard drive containing Bitcoin now worth more than half a billion pounds has been told hope is not lost - if he used the right phrase.

James Howells, 39, says his dreams of a fortune disappeared a decade ago when his then partner, Halfina Eddy-Evans, chucked out a black bin bag containing the computer drive. On it was around 8,000 Bitcoin he mined in 2009 which is said to be worth £569million.

Newport City Council has denied him access to the landfill, leading to legal action. But now experts have said Mr Howells could still access his money - if he used the right phrase.

Hadyn Jones, an expert in cryptocurrency, told MailOnline : “If he has recorded the seed phrase somewhere physically, then that could be possible.

'It's very easy to do as long as he has the piece of paper with it. So, as long as he has that, he is quids in. If he doesn't, it's sayōnara.'

“There is no computably feasible way of cracking that private key. It's computably infeasible to crack it – there's not enough time in the universe to do that.”

Earlier this week, his ex partner Halfina said: "Yes, I threw away his rubbish, he asked me to. The computer part had been disposed of in a black sack along with other unwanted belongings and he begged me to take it away.

“I had no idea what was in it but I reluctantly dropped it off at the local tip on the way home from going on the school run. I thought he should be running his errands, not me, but I did it to help out.

“Losing it was not my fault. I'd love nothing more than him to find it. I'm sick and tired of hearing about it."

A spokesperson for Newport City Council said of his attempt to access the site to retrieve his drive: "Newport City Council has been contacted multiple times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to be in our landfill site.

"The council has told Mr Howells multiple times 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.

"The council is the only body authorised to carry out operations on the site. Mr Howells's claim has no merit, and the council is vigorously resisting it."