Accidentally threw away 8,000 Bitcoins, sues city for not digging through landfill to find them
ENGLANDJames Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins, estimated to be worth $600 million, while cleaning his house. He repeatedly asked the city to dig through the landfill to help him find them, but was refused.
39-year-old software engineer James Howells has filed a lawsuit against Newport City Council for more than £495 million ($647 million) in a "last-ditch effort" to retrieve the 8,000 Bitcoins he threw away in the landfill in 2013.
The amount of compensation is based on the highest value of the digital currency at the beginning of this year. However, the engineer said the lawsuit is not about asking for money, but about "leverage" to get the city council to agree to dig up the landfill to find the hard drive.
Finding a 6cm hard drive buried under thousands of tonnes of rubbish may seem like an “impossible task”. But the plaintiff says he has assembled a team of “diggers” ready to carry out the excavation for £10m, at his own expense. If they find it, James Howells has also offered to pay the city 10% of the value of the Bitcoins.
“It would be £41m at today’s exchange rate but it could be hundreds of millions of pounds in the future. If they had spoken to me in 2013, the city would now look like Las Vegas. Newport would look like Dubai. That’s an opportunity they missed,” the plaintiff says.
ENGLANDJames Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins, estimated to be worth $600 million, while cleaning his house. He repeatedly asked the city to dig through the landfill to help him find them, but was refused.
39-year-old software engineer James Howells has filed a lawsuit against Newport City Council for more than £495 million ($647 million) in a "last-ditch effort" to retrieve the 8,000 Bitcoins he threw away in the landfill in 2013.
The amount of compensation is based on the highest value of the digital currency at the beginning of this year. However, the engineer said the lawsuit is not about asking for money, but about "leverage" to get the city council to agree to dig up the landfill to find the hard drive.
Finding a 6cm hard drive buried under thousands of tonnes of rubbish may seem like an “impossible task”. But the plaintiff says he has assembled a team of “diggers” ready to carry out the excavation for £10m, at his own expense. If they find it, James Howells has also offered to pay the city 10% of the value of the Bitcoins.
“It would be £41m at today’s exchange rate but it could be hundreds of millions of pounds in the future. If they had spoken to me in 2013, the city would now look like Las Vegas. Newport would look like Dubai. That’s an opportunity they missed,” the plaintiff says.