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.
Even if they found it what are the chances they could get any data from it after 11 years exposed to the elements? Wales is not a dry place. It will be fucked.
There’s loads of people lamenting the loss of crypto coins that they spent on a pizza back when they were worth pennies, or lost to a dead HDD. I worked with a guy who claimed he had £2 million of it on a dead drive and he was going to have it recovered, but the fact that he wore the same reeking tobacco covered jumper every day indicated that was a lie.
I once was given a broken wallet with well over 2M USD from two friends. They couldn’t recover it, asked me for help. I fixed the issues and gave it back to them, every last penny accounted for.
I got a “thanks!”, nothing else
Then a month later one of two said “besties” took off with the 2 million, went on a world trip of booze drugs and hookers, and spent it all within 4 months.
I should have kept that BTC…
Edit: this was 2 weeks before Christmas. My Christmas meal was a can of sausages. I still cringe thinking of it all.