Judge refuses to let man search landfill for his lost $713 million Bitcoin hard drive

Resume: The sad case of James Howells, a man who spent the last decade trying to recover a hard drive containing $713 million worth of Bitcoin (at the time of writing) from a local dump, may have come to an end. Last year he sued his local council for the right to search the site, but a judge threw out the case before it went to the High Court.

Howells has been trying unsuccessfully for years to persuade the council of Newport, Wales, to allow him to dig up the 2.5-inch drive. He even promised to donate 10%, or about $71 million, of Bitcoin to the local community if he was allowed to conduct a successful search.

In October Howells sued city ​​for the right to search the landfill or pay him £495 million ($607 million) in compensation. In court he stated that he has “precise plan” to restore the component and that its position is narrowed to a small area.

But the High Court judge in the case was not swayed by Howells’ arguments. Newport Council asked Judge Keyser K.S. dismiss the lawsuit, which he did.

Judge Keyser K.K. concluded that there were no “reasonable grounds” for bringing the case and “no realistic prospect” of succeeding in the full trial.

“I believe that the details of the claim do not provide any reasonable basis for bringing this case. I also consider that the claim would have no real prospect of success if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be entertained. eliminated in court,” the judge said.

Newport Council lawyers have previously said Howells has no legal claim to the drive and that anything that ends up in landfill becomes the property of the council. The judge accepted this argument.

Howells said he was “very upset” by the decision, which he called a “kick in the teeth.”

“The case being dismissed at the first hearing does not even give me the opportunity to explain myself or seek justice in any form. There was a lot more that could be explained in a full trial and that’s what I expected,” he said.

The landfill stores more than 1.4 million tons of waste, writes the BBC. Howells said he had narrowed the storage area to an area that could hold 100,000 tons. He believes Bitcoin will be worth £1 billion ($1.2 billion) on disk next year.

Howells quit his job to devote himself full-time to the search. He has hired a team of data recovery engineers who, like his lawyers, are working pro bono – raising questions about whether the data on the drive will still be accessible after more than a decade sitting under a pile of rotting junk.

As for why he doesn’t just give up, Howells said he could “spend the rest of my life working nine to five and thinking about [the fortune] every day,” so he could keep trying to restore it.

For those who have never heard the full story, Howells kept two 2.5-inch hard drives in a drawer at home. 2013one of which he intended to get rid of, and the other had a digital wallet with 7,500 bitcoins. He placed the cryptocurrency disc in a black trash bag during an office cleaning and left it in the hallway of his home. His partner suggested it needed to be thrown away, so she took the bag to a local landfill, where it has remained ever since.