James Howells, the British IT worker who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing the private key to 8,000 Bitcoin in 2013, has described losing his final legal bid to retrieve it as «gut-wrenching», as reported by Mirror.
At today’s Bitcoin prices, the lost drive is now worth nearly £700 mln. Howells has spent over a decade trying to recover it from the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales, where it was mistakenly discarded by his then-girlfriend, Hafina Eddy-Evans.
Despite reports suggesting he had given up, Howells insists he still believes the hard drive could be recovered, though Newport City Council has refused access, citing the cost and complexity of excavation. The drive is believed to lie under 25,000 cubic meters of waste, weighing up to 200,000 tonnes.
The council recently secured planning permission for a solar farm on the site and is preparing to cap the landfill, likely ending all hope of recovery.
Howells had previously offered a multi-million-pound deal to buy the site and promised to donate 10% of the recovered crypto, potentially £100 mln, to local good causes. However, council officials say he owes them £117,000 in legal fees after his claims were dismissed by UK courts.
«I am no longer pursuing the purchase, excavation, or any further dialogue with the council,» he said this week, closing the chapter on one of crypto’s most notorious lost fortunes.
Also Kursiv Uzbekistan reports that Bitcoin may be on the brink of a significant downturn, with trader Tony Severino warning that the leading cryptocurrency could plunge to £47K ($60K) if it fails to set a new all-time high soon.
