Men raised interests in the long-standing battle and made a hard drive containing discarded Bitcoin keys worth around $800 million to buy a British landfill to find a wallet before closing I'm raising my stakes to get it back.
The New York Times reported that James Howells pleaded and pleaded with the Newport City Council in South Wales to access the waste pile.
“It seems like a better plan for me and the city,” Howells told the newspaper, saying he was hoping to clean up the trash and convert it into a park, or perhaps make it a dump site again. “The landfill will be cleaned. You can dig deeper for your hard drive.”
He previously offered to fully fund the excavation process and share 25% of the recovered Bitcoin with Newport City Council. At the time, the judge said Howells “has no reasonable basis” to bring his claims, and that once the case progressed to full trial, the “realistic outlook” was not successful.
Now, the city plans to permanently close the landfill.
Computer Science analyst Howells accidentally disposed of his hard drive in a trash pile. He was cleaning his office in 2013. Misunderstanding with his partner at the time led to the drives being gathered and taken to the reclaimed land, the Times reported.
His misfortune was that the hard drive, a backup from an old gaming computer, contained the only copy of the 51-character private key used to access the Bitcoin wallet. In the late 2000s, when cryptocurrency was in its early stages, Howell mined it as a lover.
However, he realized a few months later that he was wrong and the fact that Bitcoin wallets were worth millions. He's been trying to get it back ever since.
Despite his attempts, Newport City Council suggests that Howell is slimmer in the possibility of recovering his 12-year-old wallet.
“The needle is very, very valuable – $800 million,” Howells said.
