James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, is fighting a high-stakes legal battle to recover a hard drive containing private keys to 8,000 Bitcoin — worth an estimated $773 million.
The drive was mistakenly disposed of in a landfill, holds 2009-era Bitcoin (BTC), represents a fortune tied to the earliest days of the cryptocurrency market, and is currently barred access by the Newport City Council due to its environmental permit.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Howells said the legal proceedings are ongoing and backed by a world-class legal team and advanced artificial intelligence technology trained in United Kingdom law.
Despite the estimated $773 million in holdings being thrown out in 2013, Howells remains optimistic and plans to compensate stakeholders, contribute to the crypto community, and potentially reinvest in blockchain projects — if he recovers the lost BTC.
Related: Ex-partner tosses $716M Bitcoin wallet, says ‘tired of hearing about it’
Legal challenges
Howells has assembled a legal team that includes a King’s Counsel (KC), senior barristers, and a support team of solicitors and paralegals to argue his case.
He aims to gain access to the landfill site and retrieve the hard drive that was mistakenly discarded while complying with legal and environmental regulations for access.
To support his efforts, Howell has employed advanced AI to identify relevant legal precedents, such as in Target Holdings Ltd v Redferns [1996] AC 421.
Howells said, “The court ruled that ‘equitable compensation’ could be awarded for a breach of constructive trust where returning the original property was not possible.”
Related: From landfill to lawsuit: James Howells’ quest to reclaim lost Bitcoin
Plans post-recovery
Suppose Howells is successful in his attempt to retrieve the hard drive. In that case, he plans to secure the holdings and compensate various stakeholders, including implementing “any pledges that [he has] made to the local community.”
He maintains a strong opinion of BTC’s value as “digital gold” and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as “digital cash (for spending), but he is skeptical about other cryptocurrencies and their long-term viability — such as Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL).
“As a legal owner, maybe I might ‘tokenize’ and use the 8,000 coins located in my HDD wallet as a burn address or ‘vault’ to provide verifiable backing for some over type of crypto venture, who knows.”
Even if his recovery efforts fail, Howells said he will “still remain active in the crypto space” but shift his focus to supporting, investing in, and “potentially launching” his home-grown blockchain technologies.
Related: British man sues council for $647M over lost Bitcoin in landfill
The story so far
In his over one decade-long quest to reclaim his lost BTC fortune, Howells has pursued negotiations with the Newport City Council but has met refusal for permission to search for the hard drive and refusal to agree to an in-person meeting with the council leaders.
The council issued a statement on Oct. 11 that said it had informed Howells “multiple times that excavation is not possible” under its environmental permit due to the “huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
Despite this rebuttal, Howells said the council had allegedly breached environmental regulations in recent years — backed by “100 independently verified evidence.”
He claimed the council has been breaching its landfill permit “by leeching arsenic, asbestos, ammonium nitrate and methane gases into the local environment.”
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