British IT specialist James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive from an old laptop. The problem is that this drive contained keys to a 7,500 $BTC wallets. As of today, the situation is valued at a staggering amount — more than $500–600 million (depending on currency exchange rate fluctuations).
The drive ended up in the city dump in Newport, Wales. Since then, Howells hasn’t had peace. For years he begged the city administration to let him dig up the landfill.
He found professional funding from venture funds.
He promised the authorities a quarter of the entire sum (about $150 million) to develop the city.
He planned to bring in a team of robot dogs from Boston Dynamics and use artificial intelligence to scan for garbage.
But Newport City Council remained unyielding: “Excavation would cause environmental damage to the ecosystem; we won’t allow it.”
⚖️ The patience finale: James goes all-in
Just the other day, Howells finally got fed up with asking. He officially filed a lawsuit against the Newport city council, demanding compensation of $647 million (£495 million)—the amount his lawyers estimated the Bitcoin he lost due to bureaucrats is worth.
James said that this lawsuit is his last bargaining chip, meant to force officials to compromise and simply let him go in with a shovel at the landfill. The court hearing has been scheduled, and now the entire crypto world is watching to see whether the court will set a precedent by ruling the city liable for “holding on” to a digital stash.
Crypto folks joke that if James wins the lawsuit, he will become the first person to become a multi-millionaire not by selling Bitcoin, but because the city administration simply didn’t let him find them.
How do you like that twist?