He lost $800 million in bitcoin because he threw away his laptop: Now he wants to buy the garbage dump to look for it

There are bad financial decisions, and then there’s throwing away nearly $800 million in bitcoin. That’s the situation James Howells finds himself in, over a decade after mistakenly tossing a hard drive that contained the keys to 8,000 bitcoin – a sum that was once worth pennies but is now approaching a billion-dollar valuation.

His mistake wasn’t entirely his own doing, though. At the time, bitcoin was an obscure digital experiment, not the financial goldmine it has since become. A spilled lemonade had already rendered his computer useless, and without much thought, he stashed the hard drive in a drawer alongside other forgotten items. Then, one day in 2013, it disappeared.

How does someone accidentally lose 8,000 bitcoin?

According to Howells, his then-partner, Halfina Eddy-Evans, was the one who unknowingly sent the drive to its grave. She was doing a routine cleanup when she took out a trash bag he had left in the hallway. Inside that bag? The hard drive that held a potential fortune.

At the time, bitcoin was still in its infancy, trading at a fraction of its current value. By the end of 2010, it had reached 30 cents per coin – meaning Howells' lost bitcoin was worth around $2,400. Not exactly pocket change, but hardly enough to set off alarm bells. Life moved on.

But then bitcoin surged. By 2017, those 8,000 coins were worth over $100 million. In 2021, the value jumped again, and today, with bitcoin trading near $100,000, his lost treasure is worth nearly $800 million.

The desperate search for buried treasure

Realizing what had happened, Howells pleaded with Newport City Council to let him dig through the landfill where he believes the hard drive ended up. The council repeatedly denied his requests, citing environmental risks and licensing restrictions.

Not one to give up, Howells has tried everything to gain access to the landfill. In 2021, he even offered the city more than $70 million for permission to excavate the site – an offer that was flatly rejected.

Then came the legal battles. He sued the city for $650 million, arguing that their refusal was keeping him from retrieving what was rightfully his. But in January 2024, a British judge shut down his case before it could go to trial, leaving him out of options.

Or so it seemed.

The new plan: just buy the landfill

With every attempt to get permission blocked, Howells has come up with a new plan – he wants to buy the entire landfill himself.

He recently announced on social media that he was securing funding to purchase the site outright. He hasn’t said who is backing him, but if the money is real, this could be his most ambitious and bizarre attempt yet to reclaim his fortune. Here’s how it was reported Down Under, where the value was over one billion Australian dollars.

The Newport landfill is set to close in the 2025/26 financial year, which might work in his favor – though even if he does acquire it, there’s no guarantee the hard drive is still there, let alone in working condition.

Newport City Council has remained firmly opposed to any excavation, warning that the costs of digging, storing, and treating the waste could run into millions – without any certainty that the hard drive would even be found.

Is the bitcoin still recoverable?

Even if Howells somehow gets access to the landfill, there’s one major problem: finding a single hard drive buried under years of compacted garbage is like searching for a needle in a pile of very dirty needles - needles that have been crushed, soaked, and exposed to the elements for over a decade.

And even if he finds it? The hard drive would have to be intact enough to recover the private key needed to access the bitcoin. Without that key, his fortune is permanently out of reach.

But the ‘what if’ may just keep him going.

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