This is the story of a man who has 8,000 bitcoins buried in a landfill…

© Unsplash/Kanchanara

$760 million in bitcoins, and possibly more if the price of the cryptocurrency were to increase in the coming months. That’s what James Howells, a 39-year-old Briton, has lost, who is suing Newport City Council in South Wales. Explanations.

A Neverending Story

The man therefore filed a lawsuit to try to force the local authorities to let him search the local dump where he is convinced that a hard drive containing his fortune is located. Unfortunately for him, his request was rejected.

Quoted by Business Insider, Judge Keyser KC presiding over the case said: “I find that the particulars of claim do not disclose any reasonable grounds for bringing this action.” Yet the plaintiff claims to have accidentally thrown a laptop hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins into a trash bag in 2013.

So this guy has been trying to gain access to the dump for a fairly thorough search for over a decade now. He hopes to comb through the 110,000 tons of trash using a combination of human sorters, robot dogs, and an AI-powered machine trained to spot hard drives on a conveyor belt. In his good nature, he even promises to donate 10% of the loot to the local community. A bold plan, to say the least, but one that has not convinced the courts.

In the past, the Newport municipality has always refused to give him access to the site. A spokesperson also stressed that it would be costly and could have a negative environmental impact.

A reaction between fatalism and optimism

Interviewed by the specialist site BraveNewCoin, James Howells still seems to have hope despite this verdict:

I'm disappointed that they didn't let me go to trial, but I was encouraged when the judge said that the council might own the physical hard drive, but I still own the bitcoins. Until a higher court says no, I'm going to keep fighting. Even if I never physically get those bitcoins back, I'll find a way to do something with them.

On X (Twitter), the man seemed a little dejected: “The fact that the case was dismissed at the first hearing does not even give me the opportunity to explain myself or get justice in any form. There was so much more that could have been explained in a full trial and that is what I expected. (…) This decision took everything from me and left me with nothing. It’s the great British system of injustice that strikes again ».

To delve a little deeper into this subject, don’t hesitate to reread our previous article here.

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