Who lost $800 million Bitcoin in a landfill?

James Howells, a Welsh computer engineer and early Bitcoin miner, lost $800 million worth of Bitcoin in a landfill. The tragic loss occurred in 2013 when Howells accidentally disposed of a laptop hard drive containing the private key for 8,000 Bitcoin in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales. At the time, the Bitcoin was valued at £500,000. By February 2025, its value had soared to £597 million (US$751 million). 1. **Accidental Disposal**: Howells mistakenly threw away the hard drive, which he believed was blank, during a house clearance in August 2013. His partner, Hafina Eddy-Evans, took the hard drive to the landfill, not realizing its valuable contents. 2. **Legal and Recovery Efforts**: Howells has engaged in a decade-long effort to recover the hard drive, involving legal battles and high-tech plans, but has been denied permission to access the landfill by local authorities and a British judge. 3. **Current Status**: The hard drive is buried under thousands of cubic meters of waste and earth, weighing approximately 110,000–200,000 tonnes, making the prospect of finding it "almost impossible," according to CNN. Newport City Council has declined to comment on the issue and previously stated that excavating the site would be costly without any guarantee of success. The case of James Howells highlights the importance of proper storage and disposal of sensitive information in the cryptocurrency era, where a significant portion of mined bitcoins is estimated to be irrecoverable