Wales Court Barrs Man from Reclaiming Lost 8K BTC fromLandfill

James Howells, a Welsh IT engineer who mistakenly discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin in 2013, has lost his legal battle to access the Newport landfill where it remains buried.

Now valued at over $750 million, the lost cryptocurrency remains out of reach as the court dismissed his case, citing "no realistic prospect" of success at trial.

Newport City Council has consistently denied excavation requests, citing environmental concerns, and Judge Keyser KC upheld this stance in the latest ruling.

Events Leading to Accidental Dumping of 8K BTC

In 2009, Howells mined 8,000 Bitcoin when it was virtually worthless, storing it on a hard drive later discarded in a Newport, Wales, landfill by his partner in 2013.

Realising its immense value, he spent over a decade trying to recover it, proposing a £10 million (US$12.3 million) excavation funded by investors and offering the city council a share of the Bitcoin.

However, Newport City Council repeatedly denied his requests, citing high costs and environmental risks.

In his latest legal battle, Howells sought either access to the landfill or $608 million in damages—reflecting a significant portion of Bitcoin’s peak value.

The council countered that the hard drive became its property upon disposal and that excavation would be environmentally unfeasible.

Today, Judge Keyser KC dismissed the case, ruling that Howells had "no reasonable grounds" to proceed and "no realistic prospec" of success. '

He further stated that the council's ownership of the landfill and its environmental permit provided a definitive legal barrier to Howells' claim.

Howells to Start New Crypto Based on His Inaccessible Bitcoin Fortune

Howells said of the ruling:

"This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It's the great British injustice system striking again.”

Despite the court's ruling, Howells remains undeterred.

He found some solace in the fact that his ownership of the Bitcoin was not legally challenged—a detail he hopes to leverage in future plans:

"It's not an obstacle. It's a benefit. The landfill acts like a super-duper storage vault. The coins never come out of the vault, and something else that's traded represents what is in the vault."

He also revealed his latest strategy: tokenising the inaccessible Bitcoin into a new cryptocurrency.

While he acknowledged that the concept has been difficult for some to grasp, he remains determined to extract value from his lost fortune.

Howells noted that excavation is now "completely off the table" and sees tokenisation as his last viable option:

"In the old days, gold bars would be held in a vault and the notes traded in public would represent the value held in the vault. I could use the Bitcoin as backing, like a financial vault, and create a new currency — let's imagine it's called James Coin — which would replicate one for one the assets in the Bitcoin wallet.”

He referred to his proposed digital asset as James Coin for now but hinted at a final name more rooted in Welsh heritage.

He added:

"Everyone can see the Bitcoin is never going to move. I can't get the private key so it's going to be sat there for eternity. But I believe with a court declaration of ownership, I can tokenise them into a sub-currency. I would become a figurehead for James Coin and it would be marketed as a child currency of Bitcoin. Its value would always be derived from Bitcoin — James Coin's value will go up and down as the market price of Bitcoin goes up and down."

When asked about potential branding, he considered Ceiniog Coin—Welsh for "penny"—appreciating its historical connection to ancient Welsh currency.

His saga stands as both a cautionary tale of lost digital wealth and a testament to Bitcoin's meteoric rise since its early days in 2009.