A man from Wales is launching his final legal battle against a local council for the right to search a landfill for his hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins, worth close to $800 million today.
James Howells, 39, whose partner mistakenly discarded the hard drive at the dump in 2013, faces an initial hearing next month, where the council will attempt to dismiss his case.
Despite offering the council up to 25% of the recovered value and claiming he has narrowed the search area to 100,000 tons of waste, town officials maintain his proposed excavation is “not possible” due to environmental concerns.
Howells, a systems engineer, mined Bitcoin in 2009 when it was virtually worthless but quit after his then-partner complained about his noisy laptop keeping her awake. Bitcoin neared a record high of nearly $100,000 yesterday.