12-Year Hunt for $770 Million Bitcoin Hard Drive: The Disappointing Journey of a Welsh Engineer

James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, lost the legal battle to recover the hard drive containing over $770 million worth of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin storage hard drive, mined in 2009, was mistakenly thrown away and ended up in a landfill. The Newport City Council refused access to the landfill due to environmental permit restrictions.

In the latest development, Judge Keyser, the district commercial court judge of Wales, dismissed Howells' lawsuit seeking access to the Newport landfill to retrieve his hard drive, according to a BBC report on January 9th. Keyser said the lawsuit "has no realistic prospect" of succeeding in a full trial. Since 2013, Howells has repeatedly requested the council to allow access to the website and proposed to share a portion of the lost Bitcoins if the hard drive is found.

The case of Howells is increasingly attracting attention in 2024 in the context of Bitcoin reaching a historic price of $100,000, helping Bitcoin generate an annual profit of over 130%. According to Howells, the dismissal of the lawsuit is a disappointing decision after 12 years of legal battle. He told Cointelegraph that his lawsuit was not properly considered: "My case has not been properly considered in relation to the value of the assets being discussed, and I feel that the overall UK court system has disappointed me when I was not even given the opportunity to receive justice at a full trial." However, Howells' ownership rights to the Bitcoin hard drive were not questioned in the legal proceedings, which is an important recognition, Howells said, adding: This will pave the way for me to take the appropriate steps to make money from owning my 8,000 Bitcoin digital assets in the future through potential crypto routes. Howells' legal team is still negotiating with the Newport City Council and the court on the final content of the order. The Story of the $770 Million Bitcoin Hard Drive Howells, an early Bitcoin user, mined 8,000 BTC in 2009 when the cost was almost nothing. He accidentally threw away the hard drive in 2013 when this cryptocurrency was only trading at $13.

Cointelegraph's data shows that Bitcoin has increased more than 704,000 times in 12 years since 2013 when Howells began his legal battle. Over a decade, Howells has struggled to reclaim his lost BTC. He has negotiated with the Newport City Council several times for permission to search the landfill, but the council has consistently refused. The council has also repeatedly refused to meet Howells in person. The council stated on 11th October 2024 that they had repeatedly informed Howells that "excavation was not possible" according to the council's environmental permit due to "significant negative impact on the surrounding environment". Howells accuses the council of violating environmental regulations, claiming to have "100 independently verified pieces of evidence" to support his allegations. Howells stated that the council had violated the burial permit "by discharging arsenic, asbestos, ammonium nitrate, and methane into the local environment". DYOR! #Write2Earn #Write&Earn $BTC {spot}(BTCUSDT)