Man offers to buy city dump in last-ditch effort to recover $800M in bitcoins

Bid from man tortured by trashed bitcoins seems unlikely to sway city council.

James Howells, the IT pro who lost about 8,000 bitcoins in a landfill more than a decade ago, thinks he has one last chance to dig up his buried treasure before it's lost forever.

He wants to buy the landfill.

In January, Howells lost a court battle with Newport City Council in Wales, which many expected would be his last shot at excavating the dump. But soon after, the Newport council revealed that it would be closing the landfill, arousing in Howells a new hope that the bitcoins—today worth nearly $800 million—might still be found.

Howells told The New York Times that he has offered to buy the landfill. If approved, he would remove every piece of trash—clearing out tens of thousands of tons and potentially sparing the city the cost of cleaning the site. Then, he would use "a scanner with AI-trained detection technology" and a magnetic belt to surface his long-lost hard drive containing the only copy of the 51-character private key he needs to get back into his cryptocurrency wallets, he told The Times.

But the Newport council appears unlikely to accept Howells' offer. The city has already secured permission to develop a solar farm on a portion of the landfill property. That solar farm would help the city replace diesel garbage trucks with EVs, helping the city transform a site that otherwise "would not be suitable for other uses" into a meaningful effort to reduce the city's carbon footprint, the council's press release said.

"Generating our own renewable energy to use in all the authority’s refuse vehicles will not only reduce fuel costs but also help us in our drive to further improve air quality in Newport," the council said.

Howells told The Times that he envisions cleaning up the site and turning it into a park, but the council's analysis seems to suggest that wouldn't be a suitable use. Additionally, the council noted that there aren’t viable alternative sites for the solar farm, which, therefore, must be built on the landfill site or else potentially set back the city's climate goals.

If Howells can't turn the landfill into a park, he suggested that he could simply clear it out so that it can be used as a landfill again.

But the Newport council does not appear to be entertaining his offer, the same way the council seemingly easily rejected his prior offer to share his bitcoin profits if granted access to dig up the landfill. When asked about Howells' most recent offer, a council spokesperson directed The Times to a 2023 statement holding strong to the city's claims that Howells gave up ownership of the bitcoins the moment the hard drive hit the landfill and his plans for excavation would come at "a prohibitively high cost."

"We have been very clear and consistent in our responses that we cannot assist Mr. Howells in this matter," the spokesperson said. "Our position has not changed."

Howells insists his plan is “logical”

But Howells told The Guardian that it was "quite a surprise" to learn the city planned to close the landfill, reportedly in the 2025–26 financial year. This wasn't disclosed in the court battle, he said, where the council claimed that "closing the landfill" to allow his search "would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport."

"I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it’s 80–90 percent full—but didn’t expect its closure so soon," Howells told The Guardian. "If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table."

It's unclear how investors would be paid should the hard drive remain lost or unsalvageable. And it also seems unlikely that Howells will succeed in this final charge to pick through 25 years of other people's trash to find his elusive treasure. Last August, the council voted unanimously to approve the solar farm development. At that time, the only concerns raised were over potential environmental impacts. And those concerns reportedly appeared to be calmed after mitigation plans were shared and a council cabinet member for climate change, Yvonne Forsey, gave her stamp of approval for the project.

The city appears determined to turn the landfill closing into an opportunity to advance the city's climate goals. Toms Hardware suggested it was poetic that Howells' seemingly impossible quest to find a needle in a haystack suddenly ending with his bitcoins buried under a solar farm reclaiming some of Earth's energy that bitcoin mining "frittered away."

But Howells seemingly has boundless energy to pursue what could be his last chance to recover his fortune off of a hard drive that his ex-partner accidentally threw away in 2013.

"This needle is very, very, very valuable—$800 million," Howells told The Times. "Which means I’m willing to search every piece of hay in order to find the needle."

However, during a 2022 informal initial public consultation period, public support for the solar farm was split. So, perhaps Howells could stir up public support for his plan by winning over those who remain "polarized" by the solar farm plan.

"This seems logical," Howells told The Times. "Seems like a better plan for me and the city," he insisted. "The landfill gets cleaned. I get to dig for my hard drive."

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