Man who lost $923M in Bitcoin under a landfill

James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, mined 8,000 BTC in Bitcoin’s early years. In 2013 an encrypted hard drive containing the private keys was discarded and taken to the Docksway landfill. The wallet balance remains visible on the Bitcoin blockchain but the keys required to move the coins are on the lost drive.

Howells pursued negotiations for access for years and launched formal litigation in December 2024. On January 9, 2025, Judge Keyser KC of the High Court in Cardiff dismissed the claim, describing it as having “no realistic prospect of succeeding.” The Court of Appeal in London refused permission to appeal in March 2025. The judgment confirmed that the landfill and its contents are owned by Newport City Council under UK law.

In July 2025 Howells proposed buying a section known as Area 2 of the landfill and taking on long-term environmental liabilities tied to excavation. Newport City Council said it would first seek to recoup prior legal costs. On August 7, 2025, Howells announced, “I am no longer pursuing the purchase of the landfill.” The council plans to close the Docksway site in the 2025/26 financial year and holds planning permission to convert part of the area into a solar farm intended to help power new electric refuse vehicles.

After ending recovery efforts, Howells outlined Ceiniog, a proposed Bitcoin layer-2 network he described as “backed” by the inaccessible 8,000 BTC. At the time of the announcement the coins were valued at about $923 million. The Ceiniog proposal included plans for an initial coin offering that had been scheduled for late 2025.

The technical facts are that the mined Bitcoins remain recorded on the blockchain but control of those funds requires possession of the private keys stored on the discarded encrypted drive. Howells’ efforts to recover the drive included private searches and public appeals over more than a decade. The council’s ownership of the landfill and its redevelopment timetable affected the prospect of a sanctioned excavation under the existing legal framework.