UK court dismisses bid to recover $770m worth of Bitcoin hard drive
Date: 2025-01-10 Author: Henry Casey Categories: IN WORLD
Newport, Wales IT engineer James Howells has lost his bid to recover a hard drive containing more than $770m worth of Bitcoin. The drive, which Howells accidentally dumped in a landfill in 2013, contains 8,000 BTC mined in 2009. However, access to the dump has been repeatedly denied by Newport City Council due to environmental permit restrictions.
Judge Keyser, representing the Welsh Commercial Court, said in his ruling on January 9 that Howells’ claim “has no realistic prospect” of success in a full trial.
Howells repeatedly offered a share of the Bitcoin he found to Newport City Council in exchange for permission to search, but his requests were unsuccessful.
The case gained widespread attention in 2024 as Bitcoin's price soared to $100,000, sparking a surge in interest in the missing assets. However, after 12 years of fighting, Howells' case was dismissed, which he called "unfair treatment" by the UK justice system.
"My case was not given the value of the asset in question. I feel I was let down by the UK justice system by not even being given the opportunity to seek justice in a full trial," Howells said.
While Howells' ownership of the hard drive was not in question in court, he stressed that this recognition paves the way for future monetization of his Bitcoin, including possible tokenization.
Howells’ legal team continues to negotiate with Newport City Council and the court over the final wording of the ruling.
The story of Howells’s lost hard drive began in 2013, when Bitcoin was worth just $13. At the time, the cryptocurrency did not yet have a significant market value. Since then, the price of Bitcoin has increased more than 700,000 times.
Newport City Council said that excavation was not possible due to the potential for “significant negative environmental impacts.” Howells responded by accusing the council of violating environmental regulations, claiming that the dump was polluting the local environment, including leaking toxic substances.
Despite this, Howells’s years-long efforts to recover his fortune have so far been unsuccessful.
