Man Hunting For Missing Hard Drive Containing £150m Worth Of Bitcoin Comes Up With Huge Plan To Get It Back

A man has come up with a huge plan to find an old hard drive that contains £150 million of bitcoin.

Almost a decade ago, James Howells accidentally threw his treasure chest away during a big clear out.

And over the years, he's appealed to the council in Newport, Wales, to allow him to carry out a massive dig in the city's landfill to retrieve it.

But the 37-year-old has constantly been knocked back, with bosses telling the IT engineer that they're unable to grant his request, claiming his plans pose a risk to the local environment.

Speaking to the BBC, James said he has taken their concerns on board and has put together a team to find the hard drive safely.

He said: "Digging up a landfill is a huge operation in itself.

BBC

"The funding has been secured. We've brought on an AI specialist. Their technology can easily be retrained to search for a hard drive.

"We've also got an environmental team on board. We've basically got a well-rounded team of various experts, with various expertise, which, when we all come together, are capable of completing this task to a very high standard."

James has also gone back to them and pledged to give 10 percent of his bitcoin to the council to turn Newport into a crypto-currency hub.

He also plans on installing crypto terminals in every shop in the city.

"We've got a whole list of incentives, of good cases we'd like to do for the community," he explained.

"One of the things we'd like to do on the actual landfill site, once we've cleaned it up and recovered that land is put a power generation facility, maybe a couple of wind turbines.

"We'd like to set up a community owned (Bitcoin) mining facility which is using that clean electricity to create bitcoin for the people of Newport."

Robert Hoetink/Alamy

Despite his promises of investment, however, it doesn't appear as though Newport council is going to budge on the matter.

In a statement, it said that his proposals are simply too dangerous.

A spokesperson said: "We have statutory duties which we must carry out in managing the landfill site.

"Part of this is managing the ecological risk to the site and the wider area.

"Mr. Howells' proposals pose significant ecological risk which we cannot accept, and indeed are prevented from considering by the terms of our permit."

Last year, James estimated that his fortune was worth an estimated £340m, and failed to convince the council to help him find the 'pot of gold'.

He told the Sun at the time: "It could be the case that the hard drive is worth a billion dollars and failing to act on it will be incompetence on behalf of the council.

"It's not a problem that's going to go away."