TLDR
- James Howells mined 8,000 Bitcoin in 2009 and accidentally threw away the hard drive in 2013
- The drive, buried in a Newport, Wales landfill, now holds Bitcoin worth over $600 million
- Howells offered Newport City Council 25% of the find to allow excavation — they refused three times
- A UK court ruled in 2025 that the hard drive became council property once it entered the landfill
- The council now plans to close the site and build a solar farm, potentially burying the fortune forever
Back in 2009, James Howells, a British IT engineer, mined 8,000 Bitcoin when the currency was worth almost nothing. He stored the coins on a hard drive and forgot about it.
The Man Who Threw Away $600 Million: Here is A Story That Still Keeps Crypto People Up At Night
Back in 2013, a British IT engineer named James Howells was cleaning up his house in Newport, Wales. He had an old laptop hard drive lying around. Nothing special to look at. Just a… pic.twitter.com/DD9SY4yzIM
— Crypto Patel (@CryptoPatel) June 2, 2026
In 2013, during a house clean, his partner threw the drive out with the trash. It ended up at the Docks Way landfill in Newport, Wales.
By the time Howells realized what had happened, it was too late. The drive was buried under tonnes of waste.
At the time, Bitcoin was still cheap. But as the price climbed over the years, so did the value of that buried drive. Today, those 8,000 Bitcoin are worth over $600 million.
Howells tried to recover the drive himself. He offered to fund the full excavation and proposed using AI drones and robotic systems to search the site. He offered Newport City Council a 25% share of the find.
The council refused. Three times.
The Legal Battle and What the Court Decided
Howells eventually took his case to court. In January 2025, the UK High Court ruled against him in Howells v Newport City Council.
The judge found that the hard drive became the property of the council the moment it entered the landfill. The case was dismissed, with the court saying there were no reasonable grounds for his claim to proceed.
Howells appealed and lost again.
The council has since announced plans to close the landfill site and convert it into a solar farm.
If that happens, the drive — and the $600 million fortune on it — may never be recovered.
A Lesson the Crypto World Still Talks About
The story of Howells has become one of the most repeated cautionary tales in crypto.
Bitcoin gives users full control over their own money. No bank or government can freeze or seize it. But that freedom comes with a catch.
If you lose the private key to your wallet, there is no helpline. No recovery option. No second chance.
Howells had the right idea early. He was mining Bitcoin before most people had heard of it. He just lost the one thing that connected him to his fortune.
Howells is not alone in his loss. In 2010, a man named Laszlo Hanyecz famously paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas — a transaction now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Stories like these helped shape the now-common crypto advice: back up your seed phrase. Store it in multiple places. Treat it like your most valuable possession.
Because for some people, it is.
The Newport council has not reversed its decision. Howells has not given up entirely, but his legal options appear exhausted for now.
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