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3471Let’s talk about one of the wildest legal battles you might have heard about in a while—James Howells versus Newport Council.
This story has it all: lost treasure, a decade-long fight, and a mix-up that led to the accidental loss of over 8,000 Bitcoins.
Back in 2013, James Howells, an IT guy, was doing some spring cleaning and ended up tossing out a hard drive.
But it wasn’t just any old hard drive—it held the key to 8,000 Bitcoins he had mined years earlier.
James got into Bitcoin all the way back in 2009, right when it was still new and experimental.
He was one of the early miners who used a regular laptop to generate Bitcoin when it wasn’t worth much at all. He stored the private keys needed to access those 8,000 Bitcoins on a hard drive.
At the time, Bitcoin was practically worthless, and it didn’t cost him much beyond electricity to mine those coins.
In 2013, during a routine clear-out, he accidentally threw away the wrong hard drive.
He had two identical drives—one was blank, and the other had the private keys to his Bitcoin fortune.
By mistake, he tossed the one that mattered, and it ended up in a black bin bag, which was then taken to a landfill in Newport, Wales.
Now, at that time, those Bitcoins weren’t worth much. Fast forward to today, though, and that hard drive is worth nearly half a billion pounds. Yep, you heard me right—half a billion.
James realized pretty quickly what he had done, but by then, it was too late. The hard drive had been thrown out and taken to a local landfill.
Ever since, James has been on a mission to get that hard drive back, and he’s gone to extreme lengths to make it happen.
Now, after years of being ignored by the local council, he’s decided to take them to court—and he’s not messing around.
He’s suing them for 495 million pounds or around 643 million dollars, which is the peak value of those lost Bitcoins.
But here’s the thing: James doesn’t actually want the money. The real point of the lawsuit is to push the council to let him dig up the landfill and recover the hard drive.
He’s even assembled a team of experts, including engineers and landfill specialists, and he says the dig would cost around £10 million—which, by the way, he’s offering to pay for entirely on his own, with no cost to the council.
On top of that, he’s willing to give the council 10% of the Bitcoins if they let him go ahead with the excavation. That could be worth hundreds of millions of pounds!
You’d think that would be a pretty good deal, right? But the council isn’t having it. They’ve said no over and over again, citing environmental concerns.
They’re worried that digging up the landfill could cause all sorts of issues, like releasing dangerous chemicals into the air and water.
But James says his team can do it safely—and not only that, but they’d also help clean up the landfill, which has had its own problems with pollution over the years.
James is determined. He’s been at this for over a decade, and he’s not giving up.
He even quit his job to focus entirely on getting that hard drive back. He’s got investors backing him, and they’ve agreed that if they find the hard drive, they’ll split the Bitcoins—30% to James, and the rest to his backers, the recovery team, and the council.
For James, it’s not just about the money. It’s about fixing a mistake that’s haunted him for years.
The case is set to go to court in December, and James is ready to take it as far as he needs to—even to the Supreme Court if it comes to that.
He knows it’s a long shot, but he’s willing to fight for it. As he put it, until the court tells him “N-O spells no,” he’s going to keep pushing.
So, what do you think? Is James in the right here? Should the council let him dig up the landfill and try to recover his lost treasure?
Or are they right to be cautious about the potential environmental impact?
This story is far from over, and it’s going to be really interesting to see how it all plays out.
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