Man Wants to Buy Dump Where Key to $750M Is Buried

When the price of bitcoin surged to around $1,000 in late 2013, James Howells realized that he'd accidentally thrown away an old hard drive with the key to more than 7,500 bitcoins, then worth around $7.5 million. The stash is now worth around $750 million, and he's still trying to find a way to get it out of a landfill in Newport, Wales. In his latest, and possibly final, effort, he's trying to buy the landfill site, which is due to close some time over the next couple of years, the BBC reports. It holds more than 1.4 million metric tons of waste, and Howells believes he can narrow the search to an area of around 100,000 tons. "I have discussed this option recently with investment partners and it is very much on the table," he says.

Howells, a 39-year-old computer expert, says he knew the landfill was approaching capacity, but he didn't expect it to close so soon, the Guardian reports. The City Council plans to build a solar farm on the site to supply power to electric garbage trucks. The panel has rebuffed many previous efforts by Howells to get the hard drive back. He has offered to share the proceeds with the city. In 2022, with backing from a hedge fund, he set out a search plan involving AI and robot dogs. As it had said many times before, the council said the proposal posed "significant ecological risk which we cannot accept."

Howells tried to sue the city council, seeking either permission to excavate the landfill or receive $620 million, but a judge threw the case out last month, saying too much time had elapsed and he had "no realistic prospect" of winning at trial, reports the BBC. Howells complains that the council "claimed at the High Court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway." Howells mined the bitcoin in 2009, when the cryptocurrency was almost worthless. The man who paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas has advised Howells to "move on." (More bitcoin stories.)