In the summer of 2013, James Howells, an IT engineer in Newport, Wales, had two identical hard drives in a desk drawer. One was blank. One held the private keys to 8,000 bitcoin he'd mined in 2009, back when mining was something a person did on a laptop while it warmed their legs. During a clear-out, the wrong drive went into a black bin bag, and the bin bag went to the Docksway landfill. You already know which drive it was. So did he, a few months later.
What separates this case from every other lost wallet in the Archive is what happened next: James Howells did not let it go. The Bureau presents the timeline with the respect it deserves.
2017–2021. He asks Newport City Council for permission to excavate. The council says no — repeatedly — citing methane, asbestos, leachate, and the general principle that a municipal dump is not a treasure site. He offers them 25% of the proceeds. Still no.
2022. He assembles an £11 million recovery plan backed by venture capital: AI-powered sorting machines, mechanical arms, drone surveillance, and — this is on the record — a security detail of Boston Dynamics robot dogs to patrol the site. The council does not grant planning permission to the robot dogs.
December 2024. He sues the council for £495 million.
January 2025. The High Court dismisses the claim — “no realistic prospect of succeeding” — noting that under UK law, things deposited in a landfill belong to the landfill's owner. The Court of Appeal upholds the decision in March. The law, it turns out, has a position on bin day, and it is final.
2025. The council announces the landfill will close. Howells offers £25 million to buy a portion of it outright. The council replies that he first owes them £117,000 in legal costs.
And then, in August 2025, after twelve years, he stopped. He told Forbes he was done trying to dig — and announced a new venture instead: Ceiniog Coin, a cryptocurrency built on the story of his lost cryptocurrency. The drive stays where it is, under roughly 110,000 tonnes of Newport's past, holding a number that updates at the top of this page every hour whether anyone digs or not.
The Bureau's finding: case closed, by order of two courts and one exhausted man. We note for the record that the only party yet to profit from the Docksway landfill is the landfill, which has held the strongest position throughout.