Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
On March 13, a treasure hunt that lasted more than a decade came to an end in the British Court of Appeal. James Howells, a 38-year-old software engineer, failed to get permission to dig a landfill in Newport to retrieve a hard drive he accidentally discarded in 2013, which contained 8,000 priceless bitcoins. If calculated based on the highest price of Bitcoin at $109,000, the bitcoins stored on the hard drive were once worth more than $872 million, making it the most expensive hard drive in history.
This bizarre legal tug-of-war was as dramatic as the plot of Mark Twain's novel "The Million Pound Note", but Howells was not the protagonist of the novel and ultimately failed to become a billionaire.
The birth and fall of the golden hard drive
The story begins in 2009.
At that time, Bitcoin had just been born and was still a little-known novelty, but the young IT engineer Howells keenly sensed its potential. He had been passionate about technology since he was a child. It is understood that his mother worked in the field of microchip production. Since his teenage years, he has frequently used the Internet and started assembling computers at the age of 13, showing excellent technical talent. He later entered university to study computer-related majors and has worked in many IT-related jobs in his career, including being exposed to encryption technology in the Bowman Communication System project.
Bitcoin was officially born on January 4, 2009, when the difficulty of mining was extremely low. The New York Times once mentioned that Howells might be one of only five miners in the world at the time. He used an ordinary Dell XPS laptop to mine a total of 8,000 bitcoins at home.
At the time, bitcoin was worth almost nothing, and he didn’t care much. Howells stored the private key on an old hard drive and threw it into a drawer.
Fast forward to 2013, when the price of Bitcoin began to take off, Howells' life ushered in a disastrous clean-up. His partner complained that there was too much clutter in the house, so Howells made a drastic move. Unfortunately, the hard drive containing the Bitcoin private key was mistaken for broken junk and thrown into the trash can with a bunch of old electronic products. It was eventually transported to a landfill on the outskirts of Newport. At that time, Bitcoin was worth $13 per coin.
"I had no idea what I had lost at the time," Howells later recalled. "It wasn't until the price of Bitcoin soared a few months later that I realized my wealth was buried in the trash."
BTC rose from $13 to $100,000, which is more than 7,700 times.
From shock to action: The long legal battle
At the end of 2013, the price of Bitcoin exceeded $1,000, and Howells realized that he might have lost a mountain of gold. At the end of 2024, Bitcoin once exceeded $100,000, and the 8,000 Bitcoins were worth $800 million, which was a huge fortune. So he began negotiations with the Newport City Council, hoping to get permission to excavate the landfill.
However, the city council was indifferent. They said that the landfill had already accumulated hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage, and excavation would not only be costly, but also release harmful gases, which would harm the environment and the health of residents. Howells was not discouraged. He offered to pay for it himself and form a professional team, and even promised to donate part of the proceeds to the local community, but was still rejected.
Unwilling to give up, Howells turned to the law. Over the years, he went to various levels of British courts, trying to force Parliament to make concessions on the grounds of property rights. His legal team was very creative and argued that the hard drive was a modern version of treasure and should belong to the original owner. Unfortunately, the court did not buy it. The first instance court held that once the garbage was discarded, the ownership was transferred, and the excavation permit fell within the jurisdiction of the local authorities.
Appeal failed: the final decision of the court
On March 13, the UK Court of Appeal ruled on Howells' appeal and upheld the original verdict. In the verdict, the judge pointed out that environmental protection and public safety take precedence over personal property rights, and there is no evidence that the hard drive can still be found or the data can be recovered. The court also joked: Even if Bitcoin is worth a fortune, it cannot turn a garbage dump into a gold mine.
After the verdict was announced, Howells could not hide his disappointment. He said: "I respect the court's decision, but it doesn't mean I will give up. My bitcoins are still there, and I will find a way one day." However, he also admitted that more than a decade of garbage accumulation made the treasure hunt almost impossible.
summary
This strange case quickly sparked heated discussions on the Internet. Some people sympathized with Howells, calling him a tragic hero who missed out on a billionaire; others joked that he deserved it, after all, who would just throw something worth $800 million into the trash? Another netizen joked: "If this hard drive is found, the bitcoins inside will probably smell like garbage."
Howells's experience is undoubtedly an expensive lesson. Today, Bitcoin enthusiasts often use his story to remind each other: back up private keys, keep them carefully, and never let wealth go into the garbage dump. For ordinary people, this may just be absurd and interesting news - after all, not everyone can throw a mountain of gold into the garbage dump and expect the court to help dig it out.
The Newport landfill remains as peaceful as usual, and the legendary hard drive may only continue to sleep in the garbage mountain. In February this year, the BBC reported that the landfill will be closed at some point in the 2025-2026 fiscal year. This "Bitcoin treasure hunt" may end with a sigh.
References
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ujudge-dismisses-770m-bitcoin-landfill-case
https://cointelegraph.com/news/uk-man-who-lost-bitcoin-landfill-loses-uk-appeal-case
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdl6er0369o
https://x.com/howelzy/status/1879612431837864371
https://x.com/howelzy/status/1900544679701078104
