Bitcoin buried in Newport landfill

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Docksway landfill, Newport, Wales, 2007. The hard drive containing Bitcoin was buried here in 2013. Newport City Landfill Site - geograph.org.uk - 471790.jpg
Docksway landfill, Newport, Wales, 2007. The hard drive containing Bitcoin was buried here in 2013.

In mid-2013, James Howells disposed of a laptop hard drive containing the private keys for 8,000 Bitcoin [a] in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales. Howells subsequently assembled a team of specialists and secured funding to excavate the site, but the Newport City Council refused permission, citing the cost and environmental impact of the search. If the coins are discovered, Howell proposes distributing 30% of the proceedings among the Council and the population of Newport.

Contents

As of November 2024, the missing Bitcoins were worth $750 million. Howells sued the council for £495 million, with the council contesting that the device is now their property. The High Court held a hearing to determine if a trial will take place. The attempted recovery of the missing Bitcoin has been likened to a digital treasure hunt. Howells and his team are confident that retrieval of the data remains possible, while the Council continues to profess their scepticism.

Background

Logarithmic chart showing the number of Bitcoin transactions per month since 2009, when Howells began studying the protocol. Bitcoin transactions per month.svg
Logarithmic chart showing the number of Bitcoin transactions per month since 2009, when Howells began studying the protocol.

Creation of Bitcoin

Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency, was announced in October 2008 with the whitepaper Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto, [11] [12] followed by the implementation of the protocol as a peer-to-peer network in January 2009. [13] It is a significant digital currency that uses cryptography to verify blockchain transactions and record them in a public ledger. [11] [14]

James Howells

James Howells, a Welsh computer engineer from Newport, was influenced at a young age by his mother, who was involved in the production of microchips. [15] [16] [17] By his teens, he was a regular user of the internet. Howells began building computers at the age of 13 and became a Napster user around the time of Bitcoin's inception. [11] [18] Working various IT jobs, he learnt about encryption while working on a Bowman communications system. Howells taught himself about Bitcoin in December 2008 and began studying the concept a month later. [18] After the 2008 bank bailout, Howells considered fiat currencies a scam, favouring the vision of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto instead. He became an early adopter of the technology in 2009. [11] By 2013, Howells was living in Newport with his three children and then partner Hafina Eddy-Evans. [19] The two later broke up with Eddy-Evans leaving with the children. [11] In 2021, he worked from home maintaining emergency-response systems in Wales. [11] A year later, he described himself as a cryptocurrency and blockchain project manager. [20]

Early Bitcoin mining

Logarithmic mining difficulty chart of Bitcoin, showing the ease of mining in 2009 when Howells started mining. Bitcoin difficulty.svg
Logarithmic mining difficulty chart of Bitcoin, showing the ease of mining in 2009 when Howells started mining.

On 15 February 2009, [18] James Howells, started mining Bitcoin with a Dell XPS laptop. [5] [2] He recalled mining 400–800 Bitcoin intermittently overnight for two months, [18] which caused his device to overheat. [11] Howells later damaged the device and dismantled it for parts, selling some on eBay. [5] [2] The laptop, containing 32 kilobytes worth of Bitcoin private keys, was also used for gaming, and held music, e-mails and family photographs. [11] The Telegraph considers Howells one of the earliest miners on the Bitcoin network, [22] with The New Yorker further identifying him as one of the first five miners. [11]

Disposal of hard drive

Between 20 June and 10 August 2013, Howells disposed of the encrypted hard drive, [5] [2] mistaking one device for another, [16] that contained the cryptographic private keys for 8,000 Bitcoin, [a] [20] [7] [9] valued at £500,000 at the time of disposal. [2] [22] It was reported that Howells partner at the time, Hafina Eddy-Evans, had taken the trash with the hard drive to the tip. [11] [18] According to Eddy-Evans he had "begged" her to take the unwanted items to the tip, and she reluctantly obliged, doing so after the school run. She has stated that throwing away the device was not her fault, [19] [23] [24] and Howells has said that he "subconsciously blames" her for the loss. [11]

By November 2013, the device was valued at £4 million located approximately three to five feet underground in Docksway landfill, Newport, South Wales, [1] At the time, he had accepted that the coins were lost. [2] According to Newport City Council, the hard drive would be "buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste and earth", [25] weighing approximately 110,000–200,000 tonnes, [5] [7] [26] with CNN reporting the challenge in finding the device as near to impossible. [25] The former manager of the landfill site has stated that the device is located in a 15,000 tonne section named Cell 2, where waste had been buried between August and November 2013. [18] The site holds 1.4 million tonnes of waste in total. [27]

Search attempts

Logarithmic chart of Bitcoins price from 2011 to 2019, showing the increase in value of the hard drive since it was disposed of. Howells has escalated attempts to try and retrieve the device since 2017 as the value increased. BitCoin-USDollar 2011-19 (Bitstamp, Mt. Gox).png
Logarithmic chart of Bitcoins price from 2011 to 2019, showing the increase in value of the hard drive since it was disposed of. Howells has escalated attempts to try and retrieve the device since 2017 as the value increased.

In December 2017, Wired reported that Howells had been refused permission to search for the hard drive by Newport City Council. According to Howells, the search would involve the first case of excavating a landfill site in the United Kingdom, unrelated to a criminal investigation. The council cited concerns over costs, the environmental impact, galvanic corrosion the device would likely have suffered, and additionally noted that potential "treasure hunters" arriving at the landfill site would be breaking the law. [5] Initially the council took a soft approach to the situation, indicating that they would return the device if found, but later took a tougher stance, [11] and stated that searching for the hard drive would be against the law. [4]

In January 2021, having repeatedly requested access to search for the device, Howells offered the council 25% of the proceedings then valued at approximately £200 million. [11] His offer was for the donation of £52.5 million ($71.7 million) to the council to go to the 316,000 population of Newport, that would equal £175 per person, [28] Howells was refused with the council claiming it would breach licensing regulations. [28] His belief was that the drive would be in functional conditions due to the protective casing, [29] and because the glass disk was coated in an anti-corrosive cobalt layer. [11]

According to Howells, he acquired financial support from a hedge fund, who would take 50% of the proceedings; [28] and would be able to identify the location based on council waste records, [29] followed by using data recovery specialists to recover the Bitcoin. [28] The council estimated that such excavation would cost millions of pounds, [29] [30] with Howells budgeting £5 million for the operation taking 9–12 months. [11]

Even if we were able to agree to his request, there is the question of who would meet the cost if the hard drive was not found or was damaged to such an extent that the data could not be recovered.

Newport City Council,
2 August 2022 [26]

In August 2022, Howells expanded his search plan to include the use of artificial intelligence; featuring a mechanical arm to scan waste, drones, and Boston Dynamics robotic dogs for security while excavating, as well as recruiting an AI specialist and an environmental team to the project. [20] [26] [8] His team included eight experts in landfill excavation, including a data recovery advisor who helped recover the black box from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, with an increased budget of £10–11 million from venture capitalists, who along with Howells would retain 30% of the proceedings. [7] [26] His new time-frame estimates for the retrieval of the device were between 18 months and 3 years, costing between $6 and $11 million respectively. [9]

Howells also stated his intent to develop a community-owned mining facility on the landfill site with the proceedings, [8] based on solar or wind power, [26] That year, Richard Hammond produced a short documentary on the quest to retrieve the drive involving the recovery team, and by September 2023, the team had doubled in size. [31]

Litigation

On 6 September 2023, Howells legal team published an open letter to Newport City Council with his intention to sue, in attempt to prevent future works on the site, while seeking £446 million in damages and a judicial review of the councils decision to refuse access to the site. [31] His legal team again wrote to the council two months later requesting access to the site, prior to pursing a case in court. [32]

By October 2024, the contents of the hard drive were worth $750 million and Howells sued the council for £495 million, [27] [33] setting a date for a commerce court in Cardiff in December 2024, arguing that he has intellectual property rights among other claims. [34] According to Wales Online, he is being represented by the team of barristers that have represented some of the alleged victims against Mohamed Al-Fayed. The council have argued that they legally own the device as the property was deposited to the site, with Howells' barristers denying such claim based on intent. [33]

At the High Court hearing on 3 December, that the council had requested with the intent to have the case dismissed, the Judge decided to postpone the verdict until a later day. Council barristers argued that Howells was attempting to "bribe the council" by offering a percentage of the Bitcoin to the local community, with Howells legal team contesting that their client is entitled to search for his missing hard drive. [35] [36]

Opinion

Howells has stated that had he had access, he would have sold 30–40% of the Bitcoin in 2013, speculating that reaching $100,000 would be a "conservative figure" for the cryptocurrency. In 2017 his interests were focused on Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum, [5] while anticipating that the value of Bitcoin on the hard drive would rise to between $500 million and $1 billion, describing cryptocurrencies as the "new gold, oil and water combined". [22] In 2024, approximately seven years later, the value of the hard drive reached $749 million, [34] as the Bitcoin price reached $97,000. [37]

In 2017 Howells believed that the chances of retrieving the device increased as the value increased. [22] Many bitcoin have been similarly lost. Analytics firm Chainalysis estimated in 2020 that 3.7 million bitcoin (out of an all-time total of 21 million bitcoin) has been lost. [38] In 2022 while acknowledging that the device was "a needle in a haystack" and that the investment from venture capitalists was extremely high-risk, [26] Howells remained 80–90% confident in successfully recovering the hard drive data. [26]

In 2024 Howells' legal team have stated in court that the metaphorical haystack was theoretically "much, much smaller", due to the "considerable expertise" involved in planning an excavation. [35] [36] The attempts to recover the device has been described as a digital treasure hunt. [9] [34] [39]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Reports of the total number of Bitcoin lost were initially 7,500 in 2013, [1] [2] [3] 2017, [4] [5] until 2021, [6] followed by 8,000 from 2022 onwards. [7] [8] [9] [10]

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