Buried in a garbage dump in Wales, U.K., is a hard drive containing Bitcoin worth a colossal $765 million, according to computer engineer James Howells.
Howells accidentally discarded the smartphone-sized drive in 2013, but his local council has repeatedly refused him permission to enter the landfill site and search for it, citing factors such as environmental concerns and arguments over who is the lawful owner of the device now that it’s part of the dump.
But there’s been a new twist in this long-running story, as Newport Council recently revealed that it’s planning to close down the site in the next 12 months so that it can transform it into a solar farm to power the council’s new garbage trucks. The decision to close it has given Howells a new idea for how he might be able to get hold of his much-missed hard drive.
“I would be potentially interested in purchasing the landfill site,” he said in comments reported by the BBC this week. “I have discussed this option recently with investment partners and it is very much on the table.”
The entire site is filled with more than 1.4 million tons of waste, and Howells thinks the hard drive is in an area containing around 100,000 tons of it.
To find the drive and its 8,000 Bitcoins, Howells said he would deploy a team of human sorters, robot dogs, and an AI-powered machine that’s capable of identifying a hard drive as it passes by on a conveyor belt. But if the drive has suffered damage, there’s a chance he won’t be able to ever recover his precious Bitcoins.
But if the endeavor succeeded, Howells has said he would keep around 30% of the Bitcoins for himself, with 30% going to the recovery team, 30% to investors, and the remainder shared among local causes and Newport residents.
Digital Trends reported on Howells’ lost hard drive in 2020, when the Bitcoin on it was valued at $75 million, around $700 million less than what it’s worth now.
Howells told Business Insider in 2022 that he tries not to think too much about what his share of the money will enable him to do if he ever recovers it, “otherwise you just drive yourself crazy.”