James Howells is suing his city council after years of resistance in allowing him to look for his lost Bitcoin wallet in the area’s landfill.
The British man, James Howells, whose story of searching his area’s landfill to find his lost Bitcoin wallet, has now decided to sue the Newport City Council for repeatedly not allowing him to excavate said landfill. He looks to make the council pay him 495 million British pounds ($647 million) for not being allowed to recover his hard wallet holding 8,000 bitcoin. That number reflects the value bitcoin peaked at earlier this year when it went over $73,000.
“I’m suing the council for £495m because they won’t give me back my bin bag,” Howells told WalesOnline. He lost his wallet in 2013 while mistakenly throwing the garbage bag the wallet was placed in alongside other items during a household clearout. The bag and the wallet inside it ended up at a recycling center.
What is now worth close to half a billion pounds was valued at a million pounds when this incident occurred in 2013. He has since tried to find the wallet but has not been successful. Now, the lawsuit could be his only option, which he filed by assembling a team of lawyers. The court will take a look at his case in December.
Howells has also previously offered the city council 10% of the wallet’s holdings if they permit him to excavate the landfill. However, it remains adamant about not allowing him to go looking for his wallet. It has cited environmental concerns with every request.
The council’s safety measures would not allow the excavation due to surrounding areas being exposed to the harmful effects. However, this landfill has previously been identified to breach protocols due to higher than permitted amounts of asbestos, arsenic, and methane being found.
Howells Previously Pitched a $11 Million Idea to the Council
Howells even pitched a $11 million plan to the council in 2022, which he would cover wholly and cause no cost to it. However, it refused that, too. The plan remains active, but hurdles like legality and feasibility prevent Howells from implementing it to secure his long-lost wallet from within 110,000 tonnes of garbage.
This plan involves using robot dogs, an AI-powered machine on conveyor belts, and a massive team of human sorters. While the original estimate is $11 million, a barebone version of this plan could cost less—about $6 million.
