The story of the man who’s spent the last 12 years trying to recover a Bitcoin hard drive from a Wales, UK, landfill is coming to an end.
And it isn’t a happy one.
The man who used to own the hard drive has apparently given up on his quest.
And the decision, unfortunately for him, was essentially made by others.
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The story behind the Bitcoin hard drive
James Howells, an early crypto adopter, amassed 8,000 BTC back when Bitcoin was worth peanuts.
In 2013, Howells accidentally threw out the hard drive containing the private keys to access his Bitcoin stack.
Howells tried everything he could to get his hard drive back, but nothing worked.
In 2022, he put together a team to recover the hard drive and even sued the local city council to gain excavation rights for the Wales, UK, landfill.
Back then, Howells said he was ready to keep going ‘until the door is fully slammed by the court’, which is exactly what happened nearly two years later.
In January 2025, the court dismissed his lawsuit, citing environmental concerns and ruling that Howells’ quest had ‘no realistic prospect of success’.
And now the council has also decided to shut down the landfill.
Crypto security is a double-edged sword
Several early Bitcoin adopters were a bit careless and accidentally threw away a fortune.
This generally happened – and will likely continue to happen – because crypto security can be a double-edged sword.
If you lose access to your email, your email provider can help you recover your password.
If you forget the pin code to access your bank account, your bank can help.
If you lose the private keys to your Bitcoin wallet, no one can help you, because the wallet provider itself doesn’t have a copy of said private keys.
That’s what happened to Howells.
Howells’ 8,000 BTC – worth around $920 million at the time of writing – will continue to exist on the blockchain.
But no one will ever be able to access it, because the only existing copy of the private keys to that fortune is buried, who knows where, in the UK’s trash.
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