Owner of Bitcoin drive prepared to bid on Welsh landfill

Man Who Threw Away 7,500 Bitcoin Now Wants to Purchase Entire Landfill to Retrieve It

The story of James Howells from Newport, Wales is a cautionary tale about lost fortunes. In 2013, Howells mistakenly discarded a hard drive containing what could have been 7,500 or even 8,000 Bitcoins. For over a decade, he has been on a quest to persuade the Newport City Council to grant him access to the landfill where he believes the hard drive is buried. Despite his promises to share a portion of the digital currency’s value with the Council, his plea fell on deaf ears.

After an unsuccessful lawsuit, Howells is facing another hurdle with the Council’s decision to close and seal the landfill as part of their 2025/2026 budget proposal. With the landfill soon to be permanently inaccessible, Howells is exploring the option of buying the entire site to conduct his search for the lost hard drive. His potential investment partners are considering this unconventional approach to unearth the buried treasure. As his 7,500 Bitcoins are currently valued at over half a billion dollars, the stakes of his search are higher than ever.

However, the prospect of finding the lost hard drive in a landfill is slim. The waste disposal experts at Business Waste UK outlined the challenges Howells would face. With millions of tons of garbage being deposited in landfills annually across the UK, pinpointing a single hard drive in the vast expanse of waste is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. The adverse conditions within a landfill, including compacted trash, decomposing organic matter, harmful gases, and toxic leachate, create a hostile environment for any buried electronics. The experts concluded that the likelihood of finding the hard drive was extremely low.

Despite the slim chances, Howells remains determined to pursue his search. Hall, a waste management expert, advised that redirecting his time and resources towards different pursuits might be more fruitful. With Bitcoin’s value skyrocketing in recent years, an investment early on could have potentially yielded greater returns than the efforts spent on retrieving the lost hard drive. What started as a simple misplacement has evolved into a saga of missed opportunities and high-stakes endeavors. The tale of the discarded Bitcoin drive serves as a reminder of the volatile nature of cryptocurrency investments and the unrecoverable losses that can result from one moment of carelessness.