- A UK man has lost 8,000 Bitcoin, worth 600M, in a landfill.
- Blockchain goes against the court; the Value of lost Bitcoin is re-imagined.
A man in the UK, whose 8,000 bitcoins were buried in a landfill, does not give up. More than 12 years ago, James Howells asked Newport City Council permission to excavate a hard drive containing his Bitcoin keys, worth more than £600 million today.
Source – X
With many proposals and a formal offer of 25 million pounds, the council gave him a black no, no reasoning, no leadership, as Howells said in the social network X.
From Legal Battles to Blockchain Defiance
Having taken every step within the law, playing out public offers, mediation, and even a formal offer of more than 25M, Howells proclaimed he would no longer seek acceptance. Rather, he declared that he would turn the whole stolen Bitcoin wallet into tokens.
Source – X
The 8,000 BTC will be tokenized by 800 billion Ceiniog Coin (INI) tokens, which are each pegged 1:1 with satoshis. The tokens will be based on the Bitcoin technology itself and will use OP_RETURN and integrate with such frameworks as Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals. The launch is slated for late 2025 (source: X).
Source – X
Howells took a direct approach to the established and distinguished gatekeepers who had thwarted his pursuit for more than 10 years. “You can block the gates. You can pack the courts. However, you cannot block the blockchain, he added, and it is irreversible, and the success of crypto technology over the conventional barriers.
A Decade of Obstacles
It was in 2013 when the carelessly discarded and forgotten hard disk ended up in a Newport landfill. Howells’ ex-partner reportedly took the trash to the landfill.
Howells struggled to get access to the site over the years, scratching to no avail, once again proposing to give 10 percent of the value of the Bitcoin to the local community to retrieve it.
In 2024, legal claims were denied, and the council claimed any object left in the landfill as theirs based on the Control of Pollution Act 1974.
Nevertheless, he is still in the game as plans go on to shut down the landfill and turn the place into a solar energy-generating station. Howells has shown interest in buying the landfill himself to continue the search.
Crypto’s Unstoppable Power
The move by James Howells into blockchain tokenization is a new era. By exchanging the lost Bitcoin for tradable tokens, Howells circumvents the usual physical and legal hurdles.
This transition integrates physical loss and digital creativity that demonstrates the power of crypto. It also contravenes the traditional gatekeepers who have been in the past.
He radically renounced the idea that lost Bitcoin has no chance of being recovered. Instead, he promoted the power of blockchain as something that courts or councils cannot restrict. Howells has now adopted the transparency and permanence of blockchain as his ultimate justice tool.
