A man who lost his entire $630,000,000 Bitcoin fortune in a tip is looking to purchase the entire landfill where it was thrown.
Imagine gaining all that money in crypto investments just to lose it in a dump. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares but it’s a reality that one unlucky person is facing.
James Howells, who is a computer expert, has been fighting for 10 years to recover the fortune he thinks he lost in a council dump in south Wales, UK.
The man believes he has lost $630 in Bitcoin (Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
While he hasn’t been able to get the council to let him search the place, last month, he also lost a high court case to force them to do so.
Now, Howells is considering the possibility of buying the entire property so that he can hunt for his missing Bitcoin, which he believes is worth $630 billion.
The cryptocurrency is tucked away inside a hard drive which Howells hopes he can find in the landfill.
The man lost his Bitcoin fortune when he put the hard drive into a black bag while cleaning his office and left it in the hallway of his home back in 2013.
His then-partner mistook it for trash and disposed of it.
The council recently announced that it would be closing the site, something that came as ‘quite a surprise’ to Howells.
The landfill is now set to be closed (Ray Van Eng Photography/Getty Images)
Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.
“I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it’s 80/90% full – but didn’t expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”
Howells has even offered to split his money with the council if it helps him to locate it but he hasn’t had any luck getting them on board.
Instead, the council has argued that the hard drive became its property from the minute it arrived at the landfill.
And it turns out that the high court judge, Judge Keyser KC, agreed with the council.
In January 2025, he said that he accepted the argument that Howells wasn’t entitled to attempt to find the hard drive.
We’ve all had that nightmare moment where we’ve accidentally thrown away an important piece of paper, having to rifle through the bins to find it. However, we imagine few of you have ever thrown away $630 million in cryptocurrency.
One man’s decade-long battle to recover his missing Bitcoin fortune is set to end in tragedy, with the supposed landfill where it lies due to close.
James Howells has unsuccessfully appealed to Newport Council in the United Kingdom to try and recover a missing Bitcoin wallet.
The case goes back to 2013 when Howells’ partner at the time accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin.
Despite asking the council to search a specific area of the landfill and claims that artificial intelligence could’ve been used to find it, the courts ruled against Howells, and his Bitcoin fortune remains lost to the ages.
The site is due to be redeveloped into a solar farm (Google Maps)
Bringing things to an abrupt end, Newport City Council confirmed that part of the site will be shut down and is due to be redeveloped into a solar farm over the next two years.
Howells had previously asked to work with the council and had offered to donate some of the fortune to it, since adding: “It is crazy money that could do so much good for the area.
“The council lives in the dark ages…Newport could have looked like Las Vegas or Dubai if they had the foresight to engage but they did not understand cryptocurrency and have refused to learn.”
When Howells tried to sue Newport City Council, Judge Keyser said he had “no realistic prospect of succeeding” because there were no reasonable grounds to find a case on. Keyser said that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack when it came to locating the MIA drive that’s thought to have been in the landfill for over a decade.
Discussing the landfill’s immediate future, a council spokesperson said: “The landfill has been in exploitation since the early 2000s and is coming to the end of its life, therefore the council is working on a planned closure and capping of the site over the next two years.”
@howelzy/X
Draft budget reports show that Newport City Council expects the site to shut in the 2025/26 financial year. Although the Household Waste Recycling Centre will remain open, the landfill is due to cease operations.
As for the council’s stance, it previously rebuffed Howells’ attempts to dig for the hard drive, reiterating: “The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
Howells slammed the council’s decision and spoken out saying: “This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It’s the great British injustice system striking again.”
With the Bitcoin goldmine remaining lost somewhere in the landfill, it looks like it will stay that way forever.
Featured Image Credit: @howelzy/X
A Bitcoin expert has made a worrying prediction for where the cryptocurrency will go in 2025.
This is after Bitcoin hit a record of $100,000 last year.
The crypto has seen a skyrocket of its value in recent months, hitting an all time high in 2024.
A crypto expert has made predictions for Bitcoin’s future (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
But what is in store for Bitcoin in the next 12 months? One expert believes he has the answer.
Glen Goodman is the author of bestselling book The Crypto Trader, and according to him, it might not be such good news.
He believes that the best years of Bitcoin could be behind us.
Goodman previously said: “I follow trends and by my calculations Bitcoin could be peaking at about $120,000 towards the end of January. This might well be a high point – as it then passes a theoretic red line that by my calculation goes above an expected trend. At this time, it may be time to sell.”
At the time of writing this (February 4), the value of Bitcoin sits at $98,513, which means Goodman could be onto something.
The expert went as far as to say that the crypto could fall by a whopping two-thirds of its value this year.
He continued: “I am not looking to put any more money into Bitcoin next year and believe the day after Donald Trump won the US presidential election could have been the last great opportunity to benefit from a leap in value. But I cannot discount making short-term bets if something unusual happens.
Bitcoin has seen a surge in value in recent months (Fajrul Islam/Getty Images)
“Trump is an unpredictable character, and you never know what is around the corner. For example, if he falls out with Elon Musk, and cryptocurrencies tumble in price then a potential buying opportunity may present itself if it starts climbing again.”
Goodman added: “I hope to buy when prices start rising and sell when they go down. But one thing you learn in this game is humility. You can get it spectacularly wrong. Crypto may just be a passing fad or turn out to be the new digital gold where it continues to go up like a precious metal. No one knows what is going to happen – no matter how much they might claim to be an expert.”
Other experts aren’t so skeptical about Bitcoin’s performance for the year ahead.
Petr Chromy, who is a cryptocurrency trader and IT engineer, said: “In the next four months Bitcoin could continue to rise – to perhaps as much as $200,000 [£157,000]. But if it hits $160,000 [£125,000], I will sell my entire stock of Bitcoin because I fear such a surge can only be followed by a huge fall.”
Losing something is one of the biggest bugbears of adulting.
Where have you put your glasses, car keys, and remote? However, imagine if you misplaced your Bitcoin fortune that was worth a mere $632 million.
This is the unfortunate case of James Howells from Newport in the United Kingdom, who is trying to sue his local council over his missing Bitcoin wallet.
Howells wants to gain access to the Docksway landfill site, claiming his ex accidentally dumped a hard drive containing the modern equivalent of $632 million worth of Bitcoin there in 2013.
As Howells was an early ‘miner’ of Bitcoin, his cryptocurrency was only worth a tiny amount of what it would be today.
Howells is trying to locate is $632 million fortune (BBC)
After Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 Presidential Election, crypto has soared across the board, with Bitcoin breaking records.
As reported by the BBC, Howells is accused of trying to ‘bribe’ Newport Council by offering to donate 10% of his missing crypto to the local community if he’s given access to a local rubbish tip.
He’s trying to sue the local authority to gain access to the site or is seeking £495 million (the equivalent of $630 million) in compensation.
The council’s side has said Howells is trying to get it to ‘play fast and loose’, while Dean Armstrong KC, for Howells, says the bribery situation was ‘an unfortunate and pointless phrase’ but maintains that his client has a right to retrieve his Bitcoin from the landfill.
Howells has previously said he doesn’t want to bankrupt Newport Council, however, he has plans to take it ‘all the way’ to get his millions back.
Newport Council has applied for a High Court hearing and for the judge to dismiss Howells’ claim before it goes to trial.
Judge Keyser KC has said he’s reserving his decision for now.
Howells says the phone-sized hard drive contains 8,000 units of Bitcoin, and in a bizarre twist, he’s been using artificial intelligence to try and locate it.
Howells is convinced he can find his missing Bitcoin in the landfill (Matthew Horwood / Contributor / Getty)
He wants to take 100,000 tons of landfill to a facility, where AI will apparently scan it and look for anything that could be the missing hard drive.
In the ongoing battle, Newport Council says it has told Howells multiple times that excavation isn’t possible under its environmental permit, with worries about the negative environmental impact on the nearby area.
Added to this, the council has argued that anything deposited at a landfill site then belongs to the local authority, while Armstrong says the courts need to be careful not to cause ‘a grave injustice’ to Howells. He concludes: “We seek, plainly and candidly, a declaration of rights over the ownership of the Bitcoin.”
Someone needs to find the hard drive in the first place, but according to Howells’ side, it won’t be a needle in a haystack situation.
As Bitcoin continues to climb, it must be frustrating for Howells to see his missing fortune be worth more by the day.
Imagine misplacing something worth millions and then spending years trying to find it.
That’s the story of one man who lost a fortune in Bitcoin and is pinning his hopes on AI to help him track it down.
James Howells from Newport has spent the last decade trying to retrieve his discarded hard drive that he claims to contain 8,000 units of cryptocurrency.
Howells accidentally threw his mobile-phone-sized hard drive away in 2013.
James Howells wants to use AI to track down his discarded hard drive / James Howells/X
He said it was worth £4 million when it was mistakenly tossed aside, but Bitcoin has shot up since 2014. Now, he estimates its value to have risen to around £227 million ($286 million), something Howells says ‘isn’t his fault’ and the council should acknowledge this.
Explaining his strategy, the IT engineer said: ‘I’ve narrowed down the area where I need to dig, based on the amount of time that’s gone by.
‘It’s a disused section of the site – 100,000 tonnes of a total 1.4m tonnes. I’d then take the landfill to a unit where it’ll be placed on a conveyor belt and subjected to an AI scanning system.
‘And if the AI recognises anything that looks like a hard drive it’ll be flagged and removed.’
The engineer says he has studied aerial photographs of the landfill site and believes the hard drive is within a 200-square-meter area and potentially buried 15 metres deep. The search would take nine to twelve months using AI technology.
Confident in his theory, Howells plans to donate a quarter of any funds (potentially £50 million) recovered to local community projects in Newport.
Howells estimates the hard drive’s value to be around £227 million / Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Feeling hopeful, he added: ‘Having spoken to staff who used to work at the landfill I’m sure the hard drive didn’t go through any recycling or crushing process at the time
