PANews reported on October 12 that according to Cointelegraph, James Howells, an IT engineer in Newport, UK, filed a lawsuit against the Newport City Council in the UK, demanding compensation of 495 million pounds (about 647 million US dollars) because he accidentally discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins (previously reported in March that it was 7,500 bitcoins). Howells tried many times to retrieve the hard drive from the local landfill, but was resisted by the parliament, which repeatedly rejected his request to excavate the site.

Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing Bitcoin in a garbage bag while cleaning his home in 2013. Now, these Bitcoins are worth nearly 500 million pounds. In 2013, his 8,000 BTC were worth about 1 million pounds (about 1.3 million U.S. dollars). Howells has formed a team of legal experts to file a lawsuit in court, which is expected to be heard in December.