A man from Newport who had over half a billion pounds worth of bitcoin on an old computer has had his case to search the city’s tip thrown out. James Howells has been in a decade long feud with the city council to recover the hard drive, but the most recent decision makes it look like a losing battle.
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00:00A man from Newport has had his case thrown out in what is one of the most gut-wrenching
00:06stories of modern buried treasure anywhere on the planet.
00:10James Howells has been in a decade-long battle with Newport City Council to search the city's
00:14tip to find an old hard drive that he says was thrown out by an ex-partner.
00:20This hard drive isn't just any old piece of tech.
00:22On it is a little over 600 million pounds worth of bitcoin.
00:27Mr Howells got in early on the bitcoin mining craze back in 2009, and then in 2013 he had
00:33roughly £4 million worth after forgetting about the hard drive in a drawer.
00:38In December just gone, he attempted to take the city council to court over the right to
00:42search the tip for the lost hard drive, but has now had his case thrown out, despite offering
00:47the council tens of millions of pounds if he were to find it.
00:51For £600 million, it'd be hard to give up that fight, but after over a decade, it doesn't
00:56seem to be going anywhere fast.