A court has refused to grant permission to a Welsh resident to try to recover a hard disk containing the access key to more than 8,000 bitcoins from a landfill in Newport.
Transmits to UNN with reference to the BBC.
A decade-long legal battle for his lost bitcoin fortune has ended in disappointment for James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales.
He demanded that the local council allow him to excavate the landfill, hoping to recover a hard drive filled with $770 million worth of bitcoins. Howells also promised the local council 10% of the amount that could be raised from the sale of bitcoins if the search was successful.
But the British court refused to grant Howells access to the landfill where the discarded hard drive is located. The defendants' lawyers called the proposal an attempt to force officials to finance the excavations.
Newport officials explained that, according to the law, the discarded hard drive still became the property of the landfill owners. In addition, as the mayor's office reminded, any excavation in the garbage is prohibited by environmental regulations.
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James Howells lost his hard drive in 2013 after his partner accidentally got rid of it. Bitcoin, mined in 2009, has since skyrocketed in value.
The landfill where Howells' hard drive rests contains a total of more than 1.4 million tons of waste. However, the Welshman claims that he was able to pinpoint the exact location of the bitcoin vault: there are only 100 thousand tons of waste in this area.
This decision left me with nothing. Now I have nothing left. I have become another victim of the 'great British system of injustice
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