Bitcoin miner refused access to landfill site to retrieve £598m hard drive, judge rules
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James Howells has been fighting Newport council after his former partner accidentally took the hard drive to the rubbish tip in 2013. A man’s bid to sue a council over his attempts to excavate a rubbish tip to find a Bitcoin hard drive worth nearly £600m has had his case thrown out of court by a judge.
![[His former partner accidentally took the hard drive to the rubbish tip]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2023/09/08/05/Screenshot%202023-09-08%20at%2005.59.03.png)
James Howells says his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive in 2013, only for it to increase in value over the last year to be now worth an estimated £598m. While the landfill in Newport in Wales holds more than 1.4 million tonnes of waste, Mr Howells said he had narrowed the Bitcoin wallet’s location to an area of 100,000 tonnes.
Despite this, the local council asked a High Court judge to strike out his legal action to access the site or receive £495m in compensation, arguing that it had now become its property when it entered the rubbish tip. Judge Keyser KC said that there was “no realistic prospect” of the case succeeding at trial, and ruled that there were “no reasonable grounds” for bringing the claim.
Bitcoin is known as a form of cryptocurrency, meaning it is completely virtual with no physical notes or coins. It can be used online to buy products and is kept in a digital wallet, with a number of shops and countries banning its use. Mr Howells first began using Bitcoin during the late noughties shortly after its insitgation and forgot about it when it was thrown out to the landfill.
