James Howells has begged officials to let him dig through a South Wales landfill to find a lost Bitcoin wallet that he says is worth around $800 million.

In 2022, Howells said if he can’t go into the dump, he’ll send Boston Dynamics robotic dogs to do the digging for him. That was part of a larger, $11 million business plan in which he proposed spending three years excavating the landfill to find his hard drive, while also turning the site into a mining facility. Newport did not go for that, either.

Twelve years after throwing away his hard drive that contained 8,000 Bitcoin, James Howells is looking to buy the dump he believes it's in.

A computer engineer who believes his Bitcoin hard drive worth nearly £600m is buried in a landfill is now considering buying the entire site to find it. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Bitcoin miner James Howells, who lost a hard drive containing $750 million in Bitcoin, is now considering the Newport landfill purchase.

Howells sued the city of Newport, Wales, in October 2024 for the right to search the landfill or pay him £495 million ($607 million) in compensation.

British IT worker James Howells plans to buy a landfill in Newport, South Wales, to recover a hard drive containing Bitcoin worth nearly Rs 6,500 crore. He lost the device in 2013 after his then-partner mistakenly threw it away.