UK man's bid to obtain a permit to search a landfill for his lost Bitcoin hard drive is rejected

A UK man's bid to obtain a permit to search a landfill for his hard drive — holding private keys to 8,000 Bitcoin — has been rejected by the UK Court of Appeals.

A UK man’s bid to obtain permit to search a landfill for his hard drive—holding private keys to 8,000 Bitcoin (BTC)—has been rejected by the UK Court of Appeals.

"Appeal request to the Royal Court of Appeal: refused," Howells said in a March 14 X post. "The Great British Injustice System strikes again … The state always protects the state," the early Bitcoin adopter added before revealing his "next stop" would be the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

UK Royal Court of Appeal Judge Christopher Nugee knocked back Howells’ application, stating that there was no “real prospect of success” and there was “no other compelling reason” as to why it should be heard, according to a March 13 filing shared with Cointelegraph.

Nugee’s decision follows an earlier dismissal on Jan. 9 from High Court Judge Andrew Keyser, who similarly said there was “no realistic prospect” of Howells’s case succeeding at a full trial.

In a note to Cointelegraph, Howell said his “last legal option” to exhaust is at the ECHR—where he will claim that the UK High Court and UK Court of Appeal breached his right to property and right to a fair trial under Article 1 of Protocol 1 and Article 6 of the ECHR.

The ECHR cannot overrule a UK court decision—however, a verdict in Howells’ favor would call on the UK courts to consider whether its legislation was interpreted in a way that is compatible with the ECHR’s provisions.

In a separate statement shared with Cointelegraph, Howells said he would be filing a claim to the ECHR in the “coming weeks.”

The court filings follow repeated rejections from the Newport City Council allowing Howells to search through the Docksway landfill—where Howells’s former partner disposed of a bag containing the hard drive at the site in 2013.

The council previously stated that it would not grant permission for the search as it had no legal obligation to do so and it would be "excessive" to allow members of the public to sift through the vast amounts of rubbish collected over the past 10 years.

Howells’s 8,000 BTC is worth around $660 million at current prices.

While few predicted Bitcoin would reach such heights back then, Howells’s incident highlights the importance of properly securing self-custodied crypto funds.

Howells is also running out of time, as the Docksway landfill is set to close sometime during the UK’s 2025–2026 financial year, according to BBC News.