James Howells, a man who inadvertently threw away a hard drive containing $632 million worth of Bitcoin, has been engaged in a lengthy battle with Newport City Council in Wales. The IT engineer’s quest to recover the lost cryptocurrency has been met with resistance from the council, but Howells remains determined.
The saga began in 2013 when Howells’ former partner accidentally discarded the hard drive, which contained 8,000 Bitcoins. Howells quickly contacted the council, but they refused to allow him to search for the drive in the landfill site. Undeterred, Howells has spent the past decade developing a plan to locate the hard drive.
Howells’ team has argued that the recovery process would require a precise excavation of a small area of the landfill site, which they claim has been positively identified. They have also enlisted the help of NASA data recovery engineers and AI technology to aid in the search. Despite the council’s objections, Howells remains resolute in his pursuit, stating that he would rather spend his time trying to recover the lost Bitcoin than live with the regret of not trying.
The council has maintained that an excavation would have a significant negative environmental impact and that they are the only authorized body to carry out operations on the site. However, Howells’ determination and refusal to give up have sparked a heated debate about the balance between environmental concerns and personal property rights.
