- After a 12-year quest, James Howells has abandoned his attempt to recover a hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoin from a Newport landfill.
- His repeated legal bids and proposals, including an offer to buy the landfill, were blocked by the Newport City Council and ultimately rejected by the UK Court of Appeal.
- Howells is now pivoting from recovery to a new project: a DeFi token inspired by his lost Bitcoin story, a move that has drawn criticism and accusations of a scam.
Well, after 12 years, James Howells officially abandoned his bid to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin from a landfill in Newport, South Wales.
The device has been buried there since 2013, and repeated requests to excavate were blocked by the Newport City Council, citing environmental risks and logistical challenges. That, and the dismissal of all legal claims earlier this year, ended any chance of a sanctioned recovery.
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It’s Over
The British IT engineer “accidentally” discarded the device in 2013, sending it to a landfill in Newport, South Wales. As Bitcoin’s price surged over the years, now sitting at about US$114K (AU$176K) per coin, the lost wallet’s value stands near US$915M (AU$1.4B).
Howells’ final appeals collapsed in March 2025 when the UK Court of Appeal rejected his excavation bid, with Judge Christopher Nugee ruling there was “no real prospect of success”.
Howells went as far as seeking permission to excavate the landfill, with every request blocked by Newport City Council. His proposals ranged from AI‑assisted searches to privately funded digs. That’s not all, he even sent a formal offer worth over US$40M (AU$61M) to buy and excavate the landfill.
But no, it didn’t work. So, after twelve years of failed attempts, it looks like Howells decided to move on and focus on… a new token, of course, inspired by the lost Bitcoin journey.
The token will not provide ownership or legal claim to the original coins, nor has any utility; it’s just symbolic. In an X post, Howells revealed his intentions of “tokenizing the entire wallet” (the one that contains the BTC). If that doesn’t make sense, it is because it doesn’t.
The post sparked backlash, with many calling him a scammer and warning people to not buy his “shitcoin”.
The morale of this story is: never throw away your hard drives without checking what’s in them, I suppose.
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