James Howells, in pursuit of a lost hard drive containing Bitcoin worth approximately $800 million, has proposed to buy the South Wales landfill where it may be buried. His tenacious campaign for access has met with consistent resistance from local officials.
James Howells' Last-Ditch Effort to Unearth Hidden Bitcoin at Welsh Landfill

James Howells' Last-Ditch Effort to Unearth Hidden Bitcoin at Welsh Landfill
After a 12-year quest for lost Bitcoin, James Howells seeks the Newport City Council's approval to purchase the landfill he believes conceals his fortune.
For over a decade, James Howells has been on an improbable quest to recover a hidden Bitcoin wallet he accidentally discarded in 2013, worth an estimated $800 million. The Newport City Council in South Wales has repeatedly denied his requests to search through their landfill, where he believes his lost treasure lies buried among mountains of trash.
In a final attempt to salvage his mission, Howells has now suggested a bold solution: if the council won't permit him to excavate the site, let him buy the landfill outright. "This seems logical," Howells argues. His plan entails acquiring the property, deploying advanced A.I.-trained scanning technology to sift through the waste, and recovering his lost Bitcoin key.
Howells has already taken significant steps to make this dream a reality. He has secured support from data recovery specialists and has even enlisted the expertise of a former landfill director to map out the location of interest. Despite his persistent lobbying and legal actions aimed at gaining access, council officials have remained unmoved, opting instead to plan the landfill's permanent closure.
If approved to purchase the landfill, Howells envisions transforming the area into a park or perhaps re-establishing it as a waste site after recovering his hard drive. "The landfill gets cleaned. I get to dig for my hard drive," he stated, presenting what he hopes could be a win-win scenario for both him and the city.
As the window for accessing the landfill narrows, Howells' ambitious and resourceful approach embodies the lengths to which individuals will go to reclaim lost fortunes in the volatile world of cryptocurrency. Whether the Newport City Council will entertain this unconventional proposal remains to be seen, but for Howells, it may represent his last opportunity to recover what he has lost.