Landfill where woman threw away $630,000,000 bitcoin fortune set to close after decade-long battle to salvage money
We've all had that nightmare moment where we've accidentally thrown away an important piece of paper, having to rifle through the bins to find it. However, we imagine few of you have ever thrown away $630 million in cryptocurrency.
One man's decade-long battle to recover his missing Bitcoin fortune is set to end in tragedy, with the supposed landfill where it lies due to close.
James Howells has unsuccessfully appealed to Newport Council in the United Kingdom to try and recover a missing Bitcoin wallet.
The case goes back to 2013 when Howells' partner at the time accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin.
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Despite asking the council to search a specific area of the landfill and claims that artificial intelligence could've been used to find it, the courts ruled against Howells, and his Bitcoin fortune remains lost to the ages.
Bringing things to an abrupt end, Newport City Council confirmed that part of the site will be shut down and is due to be redeveloped into a solar farm over the next two years.
Howells had previously asked to work with the council and had offered to donate some of the fortune to it, since adding: "It is crazy money that could do so much good for the area.
"The council lives in the dark ages...Newport could have looked like Las Vegas or Dubai if they had the foresight to engage but they did not understand cryptocurrency and have refused to learn."
When Howells tried to sue Newport City Council, Judge Keyser said he had "no realistic prospect of succeeding" because there were no reasonable grounds to find a case on. Keyser said that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack when it came to locating the MIA drive that's thought to have been in the landfill for over a decade.
Discussing the landfill's immediate future, a council spokesperson said: "The landfill has been in exploitation since the early 2000s and is coming to the end of its life, therefore the council is working on a planned closure and capping of the site over the next two years."
Draft budget reports show that Newport City Council expects the site to shut in the 2025/26 financial year. Although the Household Waste Recycling Centre will remain open, the landfill is due to cease operations.
As for the council's stance, it previously rebuffed Howells' attempts to dig for the hard drive, reiterating: "The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area."
Howells slammed the council's decision and spoken out saying: "This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It's the great British injustice system striking again."
With the Bitcoin goldmine remaining lost somewhere in the landfill, it looks like it will stay that way forever.