Author: Martin Young, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Baishui, Golden Finance
A landfill in the UK is reportedly about to close, and a man is working to recover a lost hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoins on it.
According to BBC News on February 9, The landfill is located in Newport, Wales, east of the country's capital Cardiff, and is expected to close in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
A spokesperson for Newport City Council told the BBC: "The landfill has been mined since the early 2000s and is reaching the end of its life, so the city council is developing plans to close and cap the landfill within the next two years."
The city council has obtained planning permission to build a solar farm on part of the land, which was approved in August.
It could contain a large number of Bitcoins stored on a hard drive that local IT worker James Howells claims was discarded after his former partner mistakenly dumped it in 2013.
He claims the hard drive contains around 8,000 Bitcoins he mined in 2009, currently worth around $768 million.
Howells has been embroiled in a decade-long legal battle with Newport City Council, which he is suing for permission to dig around the landfill in an attempt to recover the hard drive - or a share of its contents if found - or to receive compensation for his losses.
Howells lost his case in January when a judge dismissed the case, saying he had "no realistic prospect of winning" at a full trial.
He claimed there were AI experts using technology to easily find the hard drive, and that it was free for the council and the public.
However, in October the council said under its environmental consent the excavation could not go ahead because of the "significant negative impact on the environment of the surrounding area".
Docks Way landfill, Wales. Source: Google Maps
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