$720 million in a landfill: the court bans a British man from searching for a discarded bitcoin disk
15 January 12:13
In the UK, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a man who tried to gain access to a landfill to find a hard drive containing bitcoins, which are currently worth about $720 million. US DOLLARS. This was reported by Komersant ukrainskyi with reference to the BBC.
James Howells, a resident of Newport, was one of the first users of bitcoin and was successfully mining the cryptocurrency. He mined bitcoins in 2009 for almost nothing and forgot about them. Howells claims that his former partner mistakenly threw away a hard drive containing a bitcoin wallet in 2013. The wallet contained about 8,000 bitcoins, which, at today’s exchange rate, is about $720 million. US DOLLARS.
Now that the value of his missing digital wallet has risen, Howells remembered for the bitcoins. He organized a team of experts to try to locate, recover, and access the hard drive.
He repeatedly asked the city council for permission to access the landfill and offered it a 10% share of any bitcoins found if the recovery was successful.
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The landfill contains more than 1.4 million tons of waste, but Howells said he had narrowed down the location of the hard drive to an area containing 100,000 tons.
However, the city council did not meet the man’s demands. He filed a lawsuit demanding compensation of 495 million pounds from the city council if it did not allow him to search.
However, the Newport City Council asked a High Court judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
James Goody, a representative of the council, argues that under current law, the hard drive became the property of the council when it ended up in a landfill. It was also noted that environmental permits prohibit any attempts to excavate the landfill to find the hard drive.
The judge dismissed the claim and said:
“I also consider that the claim would have no real prospect of success if it were to go to trial and there is no other good reason why it should be tried.”
Reacting to the ruling, Howells said he was “very upset”.
“It’s not about greed, I’m willing to share the profits, but no one in power wants to have a normal conversation with me. This decision has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. This is another blow to the great British system of injustice,”
– he said.