James Howells, the man who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin, is now trying to buy the landfill in Wales where it was lost before the site shuts down.

The Newport landfill, believed to hold Howells' missing hard drive, is set to close between 2025 and 2026. According to Tom’s Hardware, local officials plan to convert the area into a solar energy farm, prompting Howells to propose buying the landfill himself to prevent further development.

A Costly Mistake

Howells, a 39-year-old former IT engineer, has been trying to recover his Bitcoin since 2013, when he accidentally threw away the wrong hard drive.

“I had two identical hard drives in my drawer. One was empty, the other contained the private key for my 8,000 Bitcoin. I meant to throw away the empty one—but I made a mistake,” Howells recalled.

For over a decade, he has petitioned local authorities for permission to dig through the landfill, but they have repeatedly denied him, citing environmental concerns.

A Multi-Million-Dollar Recovery Plan

Despite the challenge of searching through 110,000 tons of waste, Howells remains determined. He has secured $13 million in venture capital funding for the project—if given approval.

His team of eight specialists includes AI experts, landfill excavation professionals, waste management consultants, and data recovery specialists—one of whom previously worked on restoring data from the black box of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Under the plan, each expert would be contracted to oversee the excavation, with substantial financial incentives if the Bitcoin-laden hard drive is successfully recovered.

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