IT Engineer Loses Decade-Long Legal Battle to Recover Lost Bitcoin Fortune from Landfill

A Welsh IT engineer has lost his decade-long legal battle to access a landfill and recover a discarded hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins.

James Howells, from Newport, had hoped to obtain permission to excavate the site or receive £495 million in compensation, offering a share of the recovered Bitcoin to the council and the local community.

But a Cardiff High Court judge has dismissed his lawsuit against Newport City Council, ruling there were no “reasonable grounds” for the claim, the BBC reports.

The hard drive, which was accidentally thrown away in 2013, is now valued at around $700-750 million at the time of writing, with Bitcoin recently hitting above $94,000 per unit.

Howells, an early Bitcoin adopter, had mined the cryptocurrency in 2009 when it had negligible value.

Despite repeated negotiations and assembling a team of experts for the recovery effort, the council maintained that excavation was impossible due to environmental regulations.

The landfill reportedly holds 1.4 million tonnes of waste, but Howells claims to have pinpointed the hard drive’s location to a 100,000-tonne section.

Reacting to the ruling, Howells expressed frustration, calling it a “kick in the teeth,” according to the BBC.

James Howells should run for local government on a pledge to find the drive and give half the money to the local area https://t.co/kWl56XIWuK

Howells’ ownership of the Bitcoins was not contested, having provided evidence of the mining activity and presenting a witness who corroborated his story.

However, the court ultimately sided with the council, citing environmental concerns and the authority’s ownership of the landfill contents.

The judge noted that excavating the site would involve disturbing “vast quantities” of waste and noted the council’s responsibility to protect the environment and local community.

“The claimant has not established any reasonable grounds for his claim that the council holds the bitcoin on trust for him or that he has any proprietary interest in the bitcoin,” Judge Keyser KC concluded.

“The bitcoin, once discarded in the dustbin, became part of the waste and the property of the council.”

The ruling closes a chapter in a saga that has attracted attention from around the world, sparking discussions on ownership rights, environmentalism and the nature of digital assets.