Buried deep in a Welsh landfill, beneath layers of years-old garbage, there is a hard drive that holds the key to almost $800 million in bitcoin – or so James Howells believes, after accidentally throwing the drive away in 2013.

James Howells has begged officials to let him dig through a South Wales landfill to find a lost Bitcoin wallet that he says is worth around $800 million.

In 2022, Howells said if he can’t go into the dump, he’ll send Boston Dynamics robotic dogs to do the digging for him. That was part of a larger, $11 million business plan in which he proposed spending three years excavating the landfill to find his hard drive, while also turning the site into a mining facility. Newport did not go for that, either.

A Welsh landfill site where 8,000 Bitcoins are thought to be buried will be repurposed, at least partly, into a solar farm - but the man who lost the haul has other plans.

James Howells, the man who has been in search of his lost Bitcoin worth over $784 million since 2013 is seeking to buy a landfill.

Howells sued the city of Newport, Wales, in October 2024 for the right to search the landfill or pay him £495 million ($607 million) in compensation.

A computer engineer who believes his Bitcoin hard drive worth nearly £600m is buried in a landfill is now considering buying the entire site to find it. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

After a legal case to force the council to let him search the site was thrown out by a judge, James Howells is toying with offering to purchase it instead and says he is discussing the idea with his business partners.