The Newport council in Wales announced plans to close a local landfill site by the 2025-26 financial year. This site is infamously known as the location where IT worker James Howells claims to have lost a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins, a fortune currently valued at approximately $768 million.
The landfill, operational since the early 2000s, is reaching its capacity, prompting the council’s decision to proceed with a closure and capping operation over the next two years.
In addition to the closure, the council has received approval for the construction of a solar farm on part of the landfill site, with planning permission granted in August. This development marks a significant shift in the use of the land and could signal the end of Howells’s long-standing battle to recover his digital assets.
Howells has been entangled in legal disputes with the Newport council for a decade, seeking permission to excavate the landfill in hopes of retrieving the hard drive or to be compensated for his loss. His efforts suffered a setback in January when a judge dismissed his case, citing a lack of realistic prospects for success in a full trial. Howells had argued that he had AI experts ready to locate the drive at no cost to the council or taxpayers.
The council had previously stated in October that excavation was not feasible under its environmental permit, citing significant potential environmental harm to the surrounding area. This stance appears to remain unchanged despite Howells’s assurances of a risk-free recovery.
The lost hard drive is believed to be part of a larger phenomenon of inaccessible Bitcoin, with estimates suggesting that up to 3 million coins, or roughly 13% of the total supply, are lost. As the industry looks ahead, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has speculated that quantum computing may eventually enable the recovery of Bitcoin from such "lost wallets," though this could potentially lead to increased sell pressure on the cryptocurrency market.
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