Summary
A UK judge has dismissed James Howells’ legal attempt to excavate a Newport landfill to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins, now valued at $765 million.
The court ruled against Howells due to environmental risks, ownership laws favoring the landfill authority, and a statute of limitations barring the claim.
Howells accidentally disposed of the drive in 2013, sparking his long battle to retrieve it.
He criticized the decision as unjust, while the council maintained excavation would endanger public health and breach regulations.
And if Howells had followed common self custody advice, he’d have had his seed phrase written down somewhere safe so he could recover his wallet and BTC to any other hard drive.
He lost the coins in 2013. So, he probably got them earlier than 2013.
Seed phrases were not originally part of Bitcoin. They came with Bitcoin improvement proposal 39 in 2013.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki
Back then, the options were more limited. But there were options, e.g. making a backup, writing down the private key on paper, …
Still backup your wallet file every 100 transactions.
that too.
Basically… I’m surprised it took this long for the courts to tell him “Don’t be stupid next time, 'kay?” in that tone of voice people usually reserve for small children and puppies.
that’s one hell of an idiot tax, though.
Similar shit happened to a lot of us, and back then there were no seed phrases. Only wallet files
Yup, I still have a few bitcoins from like 2010 that died with an old hdd.