Engineer Gives Up After 12 Years of Searching for 8,000 Bitcoin

James Howells, a computer engineer from Newport, Wales, has finally given up on retrieving the hard drive he claims contains 8,000 Bitcoin - now worth around $890 million - after 12 years of battling with the local council. In 2013, his ex-girlfriend accidentally threw away the hard drive in a landfill. Since then, he has spent years trying to convince the Newport City Council to allow him to search the site, even once describing the search as his "9 to 5 job." Earlier this year, the council announced that the landfill would close in the 2025–2026 fiscal year. Howells proposed to buy the land in July, making what he called "A Proposal Worth Millions of USD," but the council never responded. Instead, they told him that he still owed nearly $149,000 in legal fees from his unsuccessful court bids. The council stated in a statement sent to BBC News that: "We will not waste any more officials' time on this issue until the payment is made." Howells referred to this as "Financial Coercion," accusing the board of blocking a "legitimate proposal" by tying it to an unrelated debt. "If they do not want to sell the land, they should say so clearly," he told the BBC. His legal battle has been long and costly. In January, the Newport Council requested the Supreme Court to dismiss his claim for access to the landfill or for $630 million in damages. The judge ruled that the lawsuit had no "reasonable basis". Howells appealed, represented himself, and even used AI to prepare arguments, but the Appeals Court rejected it. He is moving forward now. Instead of digging through the trash, Howells plans to launch a new cryptocurrency called Ceiniog Coin (INI) by the end of this year. This coin will be backed by the value of his lost Bitcoin wallet — which can be publicly verified on the blockchain — and will function as a "store of value" token.