$750m in the trash: Judge rejects man from retrieving Bitcoin from landfill

A decade-long legal battle over a lost Bitcoin fortune has ended in disappointment for James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales.

A Cardiff High Court has dismissed Howells’ lawsuit against Newport City Council, according to the BBC, refusing him access to a landfill containing a discarded hard drive holding 8,000 Bitcoins.

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

Howells had sought 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.

However, Judge Keyser KC ruled there were no “reasonable grounds” for the claim, citing environmental concerns and the council’s ownership of the landfill contents.

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. 

Howells, an early Bitcoin adopter, 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.

While Howells’ ownership of the Bitcoins was not contested, the court’s decision closes a chapter in a saga marked by missed opportunities and legal roadblocks.