James Howells, a computer engineer living in Newport, Wales, has been claiming for years that he threw away a hard drive in 2013. 8,000 bitcoinsHe managed to mine from his home shortly after the cryptocurrency was introduced in 2009. At that time, before the latest price increases, this man already had a small fortune lying in municipal landfills, but now cryptocurrencies, if they exist, are worth more than 400 million euros.

The problem is that the task of recovering the desired storage has become an impossible task. Howells attempted to obtain permission from local authorities to access the dump site where the cryptocurrencies were allegedly located, but all attempts were in vain. WalesOnline stated that Howells has now decided to sue Newport City Council as a “last resort” to get his thousands of Bitcoins back, but he is unsure whether he will launch a legal fight.

Case over 500 million euros

Lawyers working for the Briton have drafted a lawsuit seeking payment of £495,314,800 (approximately 594 million euros) for damages. This impressive amount of money is due to the calculation of the maximum value that Bitcoin has reached this year. Judicial proceedings have already begun and the case is expected to be considered by justice in December; This could help bring closure to this story that has been unfolding for years without any visible progress.

The man told the cited media that despite the lawsuit and its rejection, he kept his promise to hand over 10% of the recovered bitcoins to the city council. “This would mean £41 million (about 49 million euros) at the current rate, but could be hundreds of millions in the future,” he said. In this vein, he assured that if they had listened to him in 2013: Although Newport is similar to cities like Las Vegas or Dubai, the city council has always rejected Howells’ requests.

One of the arguments they put forward is that removing garbage from landfill can harm the environment. Is this finding the hard drive? thousands of tons of garbage This might be like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. It certainly doesn’t seem like an easy task. Over the years, there have been various estimates about how long it would take to find storage for bitcoins, and while it’s been talked about for years, the most generous estimates don’t go below 18 months.

Although the lawsuit is ongoing, Howells points out that his main goal is to “pressure” the city council into granting permission to work on the site. The plaintiff claims to have a plan to raise the £10 million (€12 million) needed to develop the excavations, which would mean zero costs for the city. We’ll have to wait to find out how this story develops. For now, we know that the Bitcoin price has changed a lot in all this time.

Pictures | Antoine GİRET | Amjith S | Erling Løken Andersen

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