UK Judge Dismisses $750 Million Bitcoin Landfill Case, Blocking Recovery Effort

A UK judge has blocked a man's attempt to recover a lost hard drive, believed to contain $750 million worth of Bitcoin, from a landfill.

In 2013, James Howells sought permission to excavate a landfill site in Newport, Wales, where he believes a hard drive containing around 8,000 Bitcoin, which he accidentally discarded, is buried. Howells even offered to share a portion of the Bitcoin’s potential value with Newport City Council if the drive was successfully recovered.

However, Judge Keyser KC ruled against his lawsuit and request for a full trial, citing the impracticality of the proposed excavation, the BBC reported.

The ruling ends a long-running legal battle over the lost Bitcoin, highlighting the challenges of storing and recovering digital assets. While Howells had garnered public support for his recovery efforts, the court's decision underscores the complex legal considerations involved in such a high-stakes endeavor.

A Long Battle

Howells' lawyer has argued that the search for the hard drive should not be viewed as a "needle in a haystack" case, emphasizing that the excavation plan involved "considerable expertise." In turn, this would significantly reduce the scope of the search and make the "haystack much, much smaller."

Meanwhile, James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive was no longer Howell’s property once it entered the landfill site. He also said its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.

Howells, who claims his hard drive was mistakenly thrown out by his former partner, expressed his frustration with the ruling, stating that the dismissal of the case deprived him of the opportunity to explain himself or seek justice.

"There was so much more that could have been addressed in a full trial, and that's what I was expecting," he said. "This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It's the great British injustice system striking again.”

Long Gone

There are currently about 19.1 million Bitcoin in existence, with a total supply cap of 21 million. This means approximately 1.07 million Bitcoin remains to be mined, according to BitBo.

In 2023, financial service company Unchained estimated that around 3 to 4 million Bitcoins had been lost forever. That would amount to around $379 billion at Bitcoin’s current trading price of $94,000.