The man who accidentally discarded 700 million dollars in Bitcoin seeks to acquire a landfill to recover it.

James Howells, a British IT worker, mined over 7,500 Bitcoins in 2009, when their value was virtually zero. Today, with the price of a Bitcoin approaching $100,000, his collection is valued at over $700 million. However, Howells made the mistake of accidentally discarding the hard drive where he stored the key to access those Bitcoins. According to reports, Howells has devised a plan to recover his fortune: he wants to buy the landfill where the hard drive is believed to be buried and excavate to find it.

Although Howells does not have an exact location for the hard drive, he has made an estimate based on when he disposed of it. He has narrowed his search to a specific section of a landfill in South Wales that contains about 15,000 metric tons of waste. As this landfill is nearing its maximum capacity, Howells is seeking to acquire it from the municipality. Authorities have warned that the hard drive is "buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste and soil," as it has spent nearly 12 years in that location.

The future of his search does not look promising. There are serious ecological risks associated with indiscriminate excavation of a landfill. Furthermore, the excavation process would be risky and costly, and after that, the landfill would need to be sealed again, requiring another significant investment. There are also plans to build a solar park on part of the land.

Regarding the hard drive, the question remains whether it would still be possible to recover anything after being covered by tons of garbage for 12 years. While this seems unlikely, it appears Howells and his investors are in contact with data recovery specialists.

This is just the latest attempt by Howells to treat the landfill as an archaeological site in search of his lost fortune, a quest that has persisted for over a decade. In 2017, he asked the city council for permission to excavate, but it was denied over safety concerns and fears of attracting treasure hunters to the site. In 2021, he offered the municipality 25 percent of the recovered Bitcoins as an incentive, but again, it was rejected. In 2022, he proposed an unusual solution that involved using robots from Boston Dynamics to do the excavation, which was also dismissed by the municipality.

There was another proposal aimed at turning the landfill into a mining center, but it was unsuccessful. Ultimately, Howells decided to sue the city of Newport for the right to explore the landfill, but a judge dismissed the case, arguing it had "no realistic chance of success."

This is the current state of affairs. Howells and his investors are trying to buy the landfill while the city council makes decisions about it. This curious episode of a man's search for his fortune is sure to provide more discussion in the future.