British Man Seeks $647M in Damages Over Lost Bitcoin
James Howells, 36, an IT engineer from Newport, has been in a decade-long fight against the Newport City Council regarding a hard drive he accidentally threw away on which 8,000 Bitcoin were recorded. With the current soaring value of the cryptocurrency, Howells is now suing for 495 million British pounds ($647 million) in damages after access to the landfill where he believes the drive is buried was refused.
A War of Attrition
It started in 2013 when Howells accidentally threw out the hard drive during a household clear-out. At the time, his Bitcoin stash was valued at about 1 million pounds. Fast forward to today: its value has surged close to half a billion pounds. That has led Howells to make several attempts to retrieve the hard drive from the local landfill, but such requests were constantly rebuffed by the Newport City Council. That has led to this high-profile lawsuit.
Council Refusal to Dig
The Newport City Council has cited the environmental issues for rejecting the Howells’ proposals to dig. The landfill was indeed marked for having a higher level of hazardous materials in the form of waste-asbestos, arsenic, and methane gas. Although Howells is promising the council 10 percent of whatever Bitcoin that can be recovered, the council refuses, citing the reason that digging may cause great environmental risk.
High-Tech Recovery Proposal
In 2022, Howells made an £8 million offer to employ innovative technology-robots-to sift through an estimated 110,000 tonnes of waste in search of the lost hard drive. He underlined that the project would be privately funded with no financial commitment required from the council. However, Newport City Council has continued to question the feasibility and legality of Howells’ efforts.
Lessons in Bitcoin Security
Howells’ situation is a lesson for crypto investors. For one to securely store Bitcoin, protection should be accorded to hardware wallets themselves, private keys kept offline, and recovery phrases backed up in various safe places. All this will ensure such sad losses as that of Howells’ will not occur in the future.
