A resident of Newport, England, James Howells, in 2013 accidentally threw away a hard drive with an electronic wallet containing 7,500 bitcoins – today they are worth more than $500 million. For ten years, Howells has been unable to obtain permission from the city authorities to conduct massive “excavations” on the site. city dump. The authorities motivate their refusal by concern for the environment. Now Howells is suing the city council, claiming £495,314,800 in damages.
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The amount in Howells’ lawsuit is roughly equivalent to what is in a cryptocurrency storage device. Howells claims he doesn’t actually want the money from the council and is simply trying to get them to allow him to continue his search. This is just the latest step in a desperate and presumably costly effort to recover the drive. Over the past ten years, Howells has quit his IT job and assembled a team of investors to whom he promises up to 70% of the crypto assets if the drive is found.
Howells also said that he is willing to share a certain percentage of the returned funds with the local community if he can find it. He argues Newport lawmakers lost a lot by rejecting his request to clean up the landfill. “If they had talked to me in 2013, this place would look like Las Vegas now,” Howells said. “Newport would look like Dubai.” This is the opportunity they missed.”
Howells was refused by Newport City Council on several occasions, arguing that work of this nature would have a significant negative impact on the environment and environmental performance.
There is no guarantee that the disk can be found, much less that it will be in working condition. Most likely, Howells wasted the best years of his life and a huge amount of money. But his zeal is understandable.