Judge blocks man’s £598m bitcoin treasure hunt in landfill
A judge in the UK has put an end to one man’s ambitious quest to retrieve a fortune from the trash, according to the BBC.
James Howells, who accidentally discarded a hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet worth an eye-watering £598 million, has lost his legal bid to dig through a rubbish tip in Newport, Wales.
James claimed his ex-partner mistakenly threw out the hard drive back in 2013, and he’s been trying to gain access to the landfill to recover the lost cryptocurrency ever since. But Newport City Council wasn’t impressed and asked the judge to dismiss his case, which was asking for permission to excavate the site or, alternatively, an eye-popping £495 million in compensation from the Council.
The judge, Keyser KC, didn’t mince words. He ruled that the claim had “no reasonable grounds” and “no realistic prospect” of success, effectively shutting down James’s hopes before the case could reach full trial.
Understandably, James was devastated. “I’m very upset,” he said after the decision. “The case being struck out at the earliest hearing doesn’t even give me the opportunity to explain myself or an opportunity for justice in any shape or form. There was so much more that could have been explained in a full trial and that’s what I was expecting.”
He added that he’d spent 12 years trying to work with the Council but hadn’t made any progress. “It’s like a kick in the teeth,” he said. “It’s not about greed, I’m happy to share the proceeds but nobody in a position of power will have a decent conversation with me. This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It’s the great British injustice system striking again.”
The Court heard last month how James had mined Bitcoin in 2009 when the cryptocurrency was worth next to nothing. As Bitcoin’s value skyrocketed in recent years, James assembled a team of experts to help recover the hard drive and repeatedly approached the Council with offers, including offering it a cut of the recovered Bitcoin. He even pinpointed the hard drive’s likely location to a 100,000-tonne area in the landfill, which holds over 1.4 million tonnes of waste in total.
Despite his efforts, the Council wasn’t budging. Its legal team argued that under existing laws, the hard drive became the Council’s property when it entered the landfill, and environmental regulations wouldn’t allow the site to be excavated.
James Goudie KC, representing the Council, dismissed James’s offer to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local community, calling it an attempt to “play fast and loose” with the rules.
In his written judgment, the judge agreed, saying, “I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial.”
For James, the loss isn’t just financial – it’s emotional, too. He’s estimated that by next year, the Bitcoin on the drive could be worth a staggering £1 billion. But for now, it seems his dreams of recovering his digital treasure remain buried deep under Newport’s rubbish.
(Photo by Unsplash)
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