A man who lost his entire $630,000,000 Bitcoin fortune in a tip is looking to purchase the entire landfill where it was thrown.
Imagine gaining all that money in crypto investments just to lose it in a dump. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares but it’s a reality that one unlucky person is facing.
James Howells, who is a computer expert, has been fighting for 10 years to recover the fortune he thinks he lost in a council dump in south Wales, UK.
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While he hasn’t been able to get the council to let him search the place, last month, he also lost a high court case to force them to do so.
Now, Howells is considering the possibility of buying the entire property so that he can hunt for his missing Bitcoin, which he believes is worth $630 billion.
The cryptocurrency is tucked away inside a hard drive which Howells hopes he can find in the landfill.
The man lost his Bitcoin fortune when he put the hard drive into a black bag while cleaning his office and left it in the hallway of his home back in 2013.
His then-partner mistook it for trash and disposed of it.
The council recently announced that it would be closing the site, something that came as ‘quite a surprise’ to Howells.
Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.
“I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it’s 80/90% full – but didn’t expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”
Howells has even offered to split his money with the council if it helps him to locate it but he hasn’t had any luck getting them on board.
Instead, the council has argued that the hard drive became its property from the minute it arrived at the landfill.
And it turns out that the high court judge, Judge Keyser KC, agreed with the council.
In January 2025, he said that he accepted the argument that Howells wasn’t entitled to attempt to find the hard drive.