{"id":24489,"date":"2025-07-16T12:34:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T12:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/?p=24489"},"modified":"2025-12-29T11:45:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T11:45:14","slug":"man-to-buy-landfill-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/man-to-buy-landfill-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-fortune\/","title":{"rendered":"Man to Buy Landfill to Recover Lost Bitcoin Fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The final act is unfolding in the story of a hard drive containing <strong>over $750 million in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/tag\/bitcoin-news-and-content\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"70\">Bitcoin<\/a><\/em><\/strong> that was accidentally thrown into a landfill. The owner of the disk now wants to <strong>buy the landfill<\/strong> itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most intriguing lost stories in the world of Bitcoin, ongoing for years, has taken a new turn. Welsh IT engineer <strong>James Howells<\/strong> has been struggling for over a decade to find his 2.5-inch hard drive, which he <strong>accidentally threw away<\/strong> and which currently contains over <strong>$750 million worth of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/bitcoin\/\">Bitcoin<\/a><\/em><\/strong>. After being denied permission to excavate and search by the court, Howells is now considering <strong>buying the entire landfill<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Howells had filed a lawsuit against the Newport City Council last year, demanding either permission to excavate the landfill or <strong>$607 million in compensation<\/strong>. Unfortunately, the court judge dismissed the case in January, stating there were <strong>no reasonable grounds<\/strong> to bring the lawsuit and no realistic prospect of success in a full trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Landfill Closure and Purchase Plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/indir-3-2.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-24490\" srcset=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/indir-3-2.webp 720w, https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/indir-3-2-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/indir-3-2-390x220.webp 390w, https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/indir-3-2-150x84.webp 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the Newport City Council plans to <strong>close this landfill<\/strong> and convert a portion of it into a <strong>solar energy farm<\/strong> during the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Naturally, this news has created a new opportunity for Howells. The engineer announced that he is considering <strong>purchasing the area<\/strong> from the municipality as it enters the closure process, and plans to submit an offer with his investment partners. Howells is puzzled as to why he wasn&#8217;t granted permission to search and excavate when the landfill was already scheduled for closure. Meanwhile, the storage site contains <strong>over 1.4 million tons of waste<\/strong>. Howells had previously claimed to have narrowed down the drive&#8217;s location to a section containing 100,000 tons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stating that Bitcoin&#8217;s value could reach <strong>$1.2 billion in 2026<\/strong>, Howells said he would not give up hope of recovering his fortune lying in the landfill, adding that he doesn&#8217;t want to spend his life thinking about losing this fortune every day. If Howells&#8217; plan to buy the landfill materializes, an <strong>unprecedented recovery operation<\/strong> could begin in the Bitcoin world. Even though the area where the lost disk is located has been narrowed down, focusing on such a small region still requires a <strong>massive logistical operation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You Might Also Like;<\/h3>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__list wp-block-latest-posts\"><li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/the-dawn-of-the-automated-battlefield\/\">The Dawn of the Automated Battlefield: How Ground Robots Are Redefining Warfare<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/the-unitree-g1\/\">The Unitree G1: A $16,000 Humanoid Revolution or a Beautiful Nightmare?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"wp-block-latest-posts__post-title\" href=\"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/the-bionic-hand-that-survives-a-volvo-and-threads-a-needle\/\">Beyond Biology: The Bionic Hand That Survives a Volvo and Threads a Needle<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The final act is unfolding in the story of a hard drive containing over $750 million in Bitcoin that was accidentally thrown into a landfill. The owner of the disk now wants to buy the landfill itself. One of the most intriguing lost stories in the world of Bitcoin, ongoing for years, has taken a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAown96uCw:productID":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[309],"tags":[70,317],"class_list":["post-24489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-web3new","tag-bitcoin-news-and-content","tag-crypto-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaverseplanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}