James Howells, a Welsh computer engineer who lost £620 million ($1.2 billion) worth of Bitcoin, is now looking to buy an entire landfill site where he believes it was accidentally thrown away.
In 2013, Howells claimed his former girlfriend mistakenly discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins. After a failed attempt to sue Newport County Council in the UK High Court last year for access to the site or £495 million in compensation, he has now shown interest in purchasing the landfill.
The council plans to close the landfill site by mid-next year to make room for a solar farm. Howells expressed surprise, saying, “It’s quite a shock that the council is planning to close the landfill so soon, especially after claiming in the High Court that allowing me to search would harm the people of Newport, while they were already planning to close it.”
Searching for a single item from over a decade ago would be a monumental task, considering the site contains 1.4 million tonnes of waste.
Howells believes the hard drive is buried in an area containing 100,000 tonnes of waste. “I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site,” he said.
Howells mentioned that he had talked about the plan with investment partners and that it is “very much on the table.”
He also expressed his intention to appeal the judge’s decision to dismiss his case against the council.