Billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin have been thrown into a landfill, and now there is a desire to retrieve it.

The incident began when a man mined a lot of Bitcoin during the early days of Bitcoin mining, completely disregarded it, and ultimately discarded the hard drive with the private key, treating it as garbage.

A man attempted to sue the city council to recover a hard drive containing Bitcoin worth approximately £598 million from the landfill, but a judge dismissed the lawsuit.

James Howells argued that his former partner mistakenly discarded the hard drive containing the Bitcoin wallet in 2013, and he wants to access the site and recover the cryptocurrency.

However, the Newport City Council requested the High Court judge to dismiss Mr. Howells' legal action to enter the landfill, or else they would seek £495 million in damages.

Judge KC Kaiser stated that there was no "reasonable grounds" for the claim and no "realistic hope" of winning in a full trial.

Mr. Howells expressed he was "very frustrated" by this decision.

"The case, dismissed at the earliest hearing, didn’t even give me a chance to explain myself or seek justice in any form. There is so much that can be explained in a full trial, which is what I was hoping for," he said.

He added that he had "been trying to reach out to Newport City Council in every possible way for the past 12 years," and now being told he has run out of time made him feel "hit in the face."

"This has nothing to do with greed; I would be happy to share the profits, but no one in power will have a decent conversation with me," he said.

"This ruling has taken everything from me, leaving me with nothing. This is yet another blow from the unjust system in the UK."

In the hearing in December, the court heard how Mr. Howells became an early adopter of Bitcoin and successfully mined the cryptocurrency.

As the value of his lost digital wallet surged, Mr. Howells organized a team of experts to attempt to locate, recover, and access the hard drive.

He had repeatedly requested permission from the city council to access the site, promising that if he successfully recovered the lost Bitcoin, he would receive a portion of it.

In 2009, Howells effortlessly "mined" Bitcoin, saying he completely forgot about its existence when he discarded it.