An early bitcoin miner says his partner accidentally dumped a hard drive containing 8,000 coins in a landfill dumpster more than a decade ago, losing more than $700 million in wealth.
James Howells, from Newport, Wales, has asked his local council if they can dig up his rubbish bin to find the junked hard drive — but has so far been refused.
The Howells are now taking Newport City Council to court, saying it either needs to give him access to their property or pay damages for the cost of the drive.
Howells, 39, says he started mining the coins himself in 2009 — drawn to the world of cryptocurrencies a year earlier in the wake of the financial crisis.
The bitcoin was stored on a private key inside Howells’ computer hard drive, which was kept in a drawer while Howells — a systems engineer by trade — updated his PC.
In 2013, Howells said he placed the hard drive in a plastic bag, which his ex-partner accidentally took straight to the dump, and deposited it in a large garbage can.
With the Bitcoin price sitting at an all-time high of $93,637 at the time of writing, the buried drive is likely worth more than $749 million.
“This problem is never going to go away. It’s always going to be a treasure hunt,” Howells explains. good luck In a phone interview. “Treasury is getting more and more valuable every day, and it’s not going to stop.”
Howells is desperate to get the hard drive back which he says he offered Newport City Council 25% of its value to spend on community projects in return for support.
However, he claimed, the council had turned down the Howells’ requests to dig up their rubbish 10 times.
Ready to sue
As a result, the distraught crypto-fan reduced his offer to 10% of the drive’s value, and now says he is prepared to sue for half a billion British pounds if he is not granted access to search.
Howells added that on December 3 his legal team will present their case at the Commerce Court in Cardiff, the capital of Wales.
They will argue that Howells not only has intellectual property rights over the drive — because it mined the coins — but also common property rights because it voluntarily disposed of the material in a council-owned landfill. Not handed over.
A Newport City Council spokesman said good luck: “Newport City Council has been contacted numerous times since 2013 about the possibility of recovering a piece of IT hardware that is in our landfill site.
“Council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of this nature would have a very negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.
“Council is the only body authorized to operate on the site.”
On the legal action, the spokesman added: “Mr Howells’ claim has no merit and the council is strongly resisting it.
Howells claims that he would only need to excavate a small parcel of land because he knows exactly when a hard drive around the size of an iPhone was dumped.
Howells added that he doesn’t even want the drive back because it would potentially make him a centi-millionaire, saying he wants justice after a more than decade-long battle and potentially happy businesses close to him. Have the ability to invest a fortune.
He added: “Our main reason for going to court is to get access to the landfill. However if… that option is not available then yes, I would be claiming the full amount against the council which I don’t really want to do. .
“I’d prefer to dig and find. It’s because it makes financial sense… if I get well. [the coins] They will actually fetch 20% more than Bitcoin’s current book value. This is because these are 2009 coins, so they will be viewed as collectors items.
He further said that the coins were never traded which would further increase their value.
“The first … mistake was obviously I accidentally put the hard drive in the black bag,” Howells said.
“Then my partner was taking the hard drive to landfill, and then Newport City Council didn’t talk to me when I first asked them in 2013 — I think that’s the biggest mistake.
“It would have been very easy to get that hard drive back in 2013 when there was only three to four months of content on it – it would have been very easy. And secondly, if the Newport City Council had spoken to me, they would have bought bitcoin and crypto. They would have learned all about currency and blockchain technology—and they would have gotten rich right away.
