A man who reckons he's got a lost fortune in Bitcoin just waiting to be dug up has made a new offer to access the site where he's convinced his old drive is buried.
You might have heard of James Howells by now; he's the man whose former partner threw out a bin bag containing a drive full of Bitcoin he claims is worth over £600 million today.
Since the Bitcoin was binned about 10 years ago, the 39-year-old has been trying to get it back, going so far as to launch a legal bid against Newport City Council asking for permission to search the landfill site he's sure it has been stashed in.
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That bid was unsuccessful, with his case being thrown out by a judge last month, but James might have another way to get at his buried treasure.
The refuse site with the drive supposedly buried somewhere in it is set to close within the next couple of years, and Howells wants to see about buying the land as another way to gain access to the site.
He's been backed by a US hedge fund which would presumably take some of the Bitcoin in payment, and he's now hoping that if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
He's planning to buy the landfill site 'as is' from the council, and said he'd be bringing up the closure at the Royal Court of Appeal.
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Howells said: "The council planning on closing the landfill so soon is quite a surprise, especially since Newport City Council claimed in their recent High Court statements that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway."
Newport City Council have said that they are 'working on a planned closure and capping of the site over the next two years' and part of the site is going to become a solar farm which will generate power for the council's electric bin lorries.
When his legal bid to gain access to the site was struck down by a judge, Howells was told he had 'no realistic prospect of succeeding' if the matter went to trial.
It has been many years since the binned Bitcoin was dumped in the landfill site, and plenty more rubbish has been piled on top of it since then.
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Whether the data on drive would even still be recoverable is a mystery, and at a court hearing it was said that looking for the drive would be like searching for a 'needle in a haystack'.
Howells has been trying to recover the drive since he realised it had been mistakenly binned, but each of his efforts has been rebuffed.
In the past he's made various offers in the hopes of being granted permission to dig up the drive, including claiming that he would offer money from the Bitcoin to the local area.
The council have said that digging up the site would have a 'huge environmental impact'.
Topics: UK News, Bitcoin, Money, Cryptocurrency
Joe Harker