After 12 years of rummaging through garbage dumps, this man gave up $920 million

After 12 years of searching, British man James Howells has given up on the search for a discarded hard drive containing 8,000 BTC (approximately $920 million at $115,000 per hard drive). Note from Odaily Planet Daily: While early British media reports consistently reported 7,500 BTC, later media reports and Howells' account consistently stated 8,000 BTC. Therefore, this article will use this number as the standard.

Accidentally lost 8,000 BTC

James Howells was born in Newport, Wales in the 1980s. Influenced by his mother who worked in microchip production, Howells was exposed to computer technology at an early age. He became a frequent internet user as a teenager, started assembling computers at the age of 13, and eventually became a computer engineer.

As early as the end of 2008, Howells was exposed to Bitcoin knowledge. On February 15, 2009, Howells began mining Bitcoin using a Dell XPS laptop. The Daily Telegraph identified him as one of the earliest miners on the Bitcoin network, and The New Yorker noted that he joined when there were only five other miners on the network. However, Howells's mining efforts didn't last long, as his girlfriend complained about the noise and heat generated by the laptop. In 2010, Howells accidentally spilled lemonade on his computer, breaking it. He disassembled it and removed its components, most of which were thrown away or sold. The hard drive containing the private keys to 8,000 BTC remained in a drawer. Between June 20 and August 10, 2013, Howells mistakenly discarded the hard drive as waste. Howells later stated that it was his ex-girlfriend, Hafina Eddy-Evans, who delivered the trash containing the hard drive to the landfill. However, Eddy-Evans claimed that Howells had pleaded with her to help dispose of the discarded items and denied any fault. Howells said he "subconsciously" believed her to be responsible. Howells later recalled: "I didn't pay much attention to Bitcoin at the time because I was distracted. Then I had a few children and started renovating my house, and I completely forgot about Bitcoin until it appeared in the news again." In November 2013, The Guardian reported that the hard drive was speculated to be buried approximately 0.9-1.5 meters below the Docksway landfill in Newport. Howells also admitted in the interview at the time that the BTC may have been discarded forever. Newport City Council later stated that the hard drive may be buried beneath 25,000 cubic meters (approximately 110,000 to 200,000 tons) of waste. A former landfill manager confirmed it was located in a 15,000-ton area called Cell-2 (accumulated between August and November 2013), with a total landfill volume of 1.4 million tons. As the price of Bitcoin (BTC) continued to climb, Howells began repeatedly attempting to locate the hard drive, but was repeatedly rejected by the local council for various reasons. In December 2017, Newport City Council rejected Howells' application to search the landfill, citing cost, environmental impact, the risk of equipment corrosion, and the potential for illegal "gold rush" behavior. In January 2021, Howells proposed to donate 25% of the bitcoins (then worth £52.5 million) to the local 316,000 residents (£175 per person), but the council again rejected it on the grounds that it violated licensing regulations.

A spokesperson for the Newport City Council told CNN that local authorities have been contacted several times since 2013 asking if they could assist in recovering the hard drive allegedly containing Bitcoin. The council did not reject the offer, but was not allowed to excavate the site. "The council has repeatedly told Mr. Howells that excavating a landfill is impossible under our licensing regulations, and that the excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area. The cost of excavating a landfill, storing and processing waste could be as high as millions of pounds, and there is no guarantee that the hard drive will be found or that it will still be working properly."

However, Howells insisted that the hard drive was still working properly under the protection of the protective casing and the anti-corrosion cobalt layer of the glass disk. After all, with the value of these BTCs skyrocketing, no one could easily give up such a huge fortune.

In order to obtain the council's landfill access permit, Howells had developed several detailed plans to specifically address the council's concerns. During this period, a hedge fund was interested in funding Howlls (the two parties agreed to split the profits 50% equally). The plan was to locate the hard drive through municipal waste records and have it handled by a professional data recovery team. Howells' budget for the 9 to 12 months of excavation work was 5 million pounds. In August 2022, with the assistance of some venture capital funds (the venture capital funds received 30% of the profits), Howells upgraded the search plan to use AI robotic arms to scan waste, deploy drones and Boston Dynamics robot dogs for security, and set up an environmental team. The budget also increased to 10-11 million pounds. To maximize community support and ultimately secure a search permit from the council, Howells proposed using the proceeds to develop a community-owned mining facility on the landfill, powered by solar or wind energy. On September 6, 2023, after a long period of unsuccessful application, Howells commissioned his legal team to issue an open letter to Newport City Council, announcing their intention to file a lawsuit. The letter demanded a halt to construction on the landfill, while also seeking £446 million in damages and requesting a judicial review of the council's refusal to open the site. Two months later, his legal team wrote to the council again, requesting site access permission before going to court. As of October 2024, the bitcoin on the hard drive was valued at $750 million. Howells ultimately sued the council for £495 million, but the council argued that ownership of the hard drive vested in the city under waste disposal regulations. On January 9, 2025, a judge dismissed Howells' lawsuit, finding it "lacking probable cause" and "unsuccessful." Howells expressed his "deep disappointment" to the media but also revealed his upcoming plan: to issue a new cryptocurrency backed by the irrecoverable Bitcoin. Unable to obtain permission from the council, Howells abandoned his search, but instead opted for another potential avenue. As early as May of this year, Howells disclosed on his personal account X that he intended to tokenize 21% of the 8,000 BTC, with the goal of launching it on October 1st during TOKEN 2049 Singapore, with a plan to raise $75 million... However, Howells did not mention this again on his personal social media channels in the following months, and it seems that the plan has died. After all, everyone knows that the BTC is unlikely to be recovered, and it is a bit embarrassing to want to raise $75 million. This morning, Howells once again disclosed a new plan for the tokenization of this BTC, planning to issue 800 billion Ceiniog Coin (INI). The token is targeted for proposal at the end of the year and will be built on the Bitcoin network, supported by OP_RETURN, and integrated with Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals. Each INI is anchored to the value of 1 satoshi in the BTC... Howells concluded with a rather impassioned message: "To all the senior and distinguished gatekeepers who have stood in my way for over a decade: You can block the gates! You can control the courts! But you can't stop the blockchain! Crypto has won!" However, given the fact that the hard drive remains unrecoverable, even with Howells's rosy description, INI is not actually backed by any assets, raising questions about the future of the project. Crypto may win, but Howells's coin issuance likely won't.