Bitcoin News Today: Welsh Man Tokenizes Legal Claim to 8000 Lost Bitcoin After Failed Landfill Recovery

James Howells, the Welsh man who accidentally discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin in 2013, has shifted from a years-long effort to recover the hardware from a landfill to launching a new token representing his legal claim to the lost coins. After over a decade of legal battles, drone surveys, and offers to buy the Newport landfill outright, Howells has now decided to abandon physical retrieval in favor of a blockchain-backed solution [1].

The discarded hard drive was estimated to be nearly worthless when it was lost, but with Bitcoin’s price having surged over the years, the 8,000 BTC now represent a fortune worth approximately $905 million [1]. Howells has attempted multiple recovery methods, including a $33.3 million offer to acquire the landfill, yet the UK Court of Appeal rejected his excavation permit in March 2025, citing no “real prospect of success” [1]. Earlier that year, he had also proposed an Ordinals-based token offering 21% of the wallet’s value to fund the dig, but the city of Newport did not respond [1].

Now, rather than trying to excavate the physical hard drive, Howells is focusing on tokenizing his legal claim to the 8,000 BTC. According to a 2025 High Court ruling, while the Newport City Council may hold the hard drive, it does not own the Bitcoin stored on it [1]. Howells is leveraging this legal distinction to create Ceiniog Coin (INI), a Bitcoin Layer 2 smart token that will represent his ownership claim [1].

Named after the Welsh word for “penny,” Ceiniog Coin is intended to function as a utility token within a new Web3 payment ecosystem [1]. The project aims to utilize Bitcoin’s latest network upgrades to enable more complex on-chain functionality, and Howells plans to launch the token after October 2025, with an initial coin offering to follow later in the year [1].

Harry Donnelly, founder and CEO of Circuit, has cast doubt on the token’s viability, describing it as a memecoin that will likely trade on narrative rather than substance [1]. He noted that the chances of recovering the Bitcoin are already low, and even if it were possible, the token would struggle to be recognized as a valid legal claim [1]. Despite this, Howells remains undeterred, viewing the landfill as a “vault no one can open, but everyone can see” [1].

Howells’ story has become one of the most infamous in crypto history, and his pivot to tokenization marks a bold exploration of digital property rights and blockchain-based legal claims [1]. The entertainment industry has also taken notice, with Howells recently signing an exclusive deal with Lebul, a Los Angeles-based production company, to adapt his story into a docuseries titled “The Buried Bitcoin” [1].

While the physical recovery of the hard drive now seems improbable, the tokenization strategy represents a creative response to a problem with no physical solution. Whether the market embraces Ceiniog Coin remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: James Howells has not given up on his 8,000 BTC — he has simply changed the way he intends to claim them [1].

Source: [1] UK Man to start Token to Reclaim Lost 8000 Bitcoins (https://thecurrencyanalytics.com/bitcoin/uk-man-who-lost-8000-bitcoin-in-landfill-pivots-to-tokenizing-ownership-188983)