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James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, has lost a legal battle to recover a hard drive containing more than $770 million worth of Bitcoin that he accidentally discarded in 2013.

On January 9, Judge Keyser, the Circuit Commercial Judge for Wales, dismissed Howells’ case against Newport City Council, stating it had “no realistic prospect” of succeeding in court, according to a BBC report.

The hard drive, which contains 8,000 Bitcoin mined in 2009, is believed to be buried in a local landfill.

The council has consistently denied Howells access to the landfill, citing restrictions under environmental permits.

Despite numerous appeals and offers of a share of the Bitcoin fortune if the drive were recovered, the council has refused, citing potential negative environmental impacts.

Howells, an early Bitcoin adopter, mined the cryptocurrency in 2009 when it was nearly worthless. The drive was mistakenly thrown away in 2013, when Bitcoin was trading at just $13 per coin.

Bitcoin has since reached historic highs, including a rally to $100,000 in 2024, before recently trading around $94,000.

Over the years, Howells has accused Newport City Council of breaching environmental regulations, claiming to have “100 independently verified pieces of evidence” of arsenic, asbestos, ammonium nitrate, and methane gas leaks from the landfill.

The council has denied these allegations and reiterated in October 2024 that excavation was impossible due to environmental permit constraints.

Despite his decade-long efforts to recover the hard drive, Howells’ legal avenues have now been effectively exhausted, marking an end to his pursuit of the lost Bitcoin fortune.

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