He threw away a hard drive in 2013. It might hold $649 million in Bitcoin. For 12 years, he’s been combing through a Welsh landfill, and the ground might finally shift.
A man in a hi-vis jacket stares across a lunar slope of compacted rubbish while a drone ticks overhead, mapping, watching, hoping. *The beeping from the monitor is tiny, almost embarrassed, like it knows what’s at stake.*
James Howells has told this story a thousand times, and still his voice dips on the word “accident”. He binned the wrong hard drive. Somewhere under this grey-brown hill, a sliver of metal and silicon could unlock 7,500 Bitcoin. One small rectangle. A whole new life.
He wipes water from his glasses and nods at a patch just beyond the fence. The council says no. He says not yet. The sky says maybe.
Twelve winters, one stubborn drive
On paper, this is simple: find a hard drive. In practice, it’s a chess match of geology, policy, and belief. Every winter compacts the waste a little more. Every summer bakes the clay cap harder.
Back in 2013, Bitcoin felt niche, a geek’s experiment more than a global asset. Howells had mined thousands of coins on a home rig, then moved house and cleared out kit. The £0 hard drive decision spiralled into a headline curse as Bitcoin’s price surged, fell, surged again. **At today’s price, that stash hovers around $649 million.** That number is why venture funds took his calls. It’s also why Newport City Council closed ranks.
There’s a straightforward logic to the stalemate. Landfills are delicate ecologies of failure, engineered to hold back leaks, gas, and rot. Digging isn’t just digging; it’s unpicking layers that trap methane and any nasties that shouldn’t see sunlight. The council’s lawyers hear environmental liability, not treasure. Howells hears a solvable engineering problem, not a civic nightmare. Both can be true.
The new plan that could break the deadlock
What changes a story like this isn’t louder pleading. It’s a rig, a bond, and a process. Howells has been working with remediation specialists on a staged search that looks less like a dig and more like surgery: shallow pilot trenches, negative-pressure tents, and conveyor-based sorting sealed from the breeze.
First comes mapping. Drone photogrammetry to model the surface. Then ground-penetrating radar to characterise layers, and hyperspectral cameras to spot electronic waste footprints. After that, robotic pickers trained on hard-drive profiles handle materials the way a museum conservator handles parchment. **Everything logged, sealed, and reversible.**
He’s also pushing a financial lever that regulators understand. A performance bond big enough to cover worst-case remediation, held in escrow, so taxpayers don’t shoulder risk if something goes wrong. That’s paired with a community giveback: a funded e-waste sorting line that stays in Newport after the search ends. It’s not romance. It’s leverage.
Why the council might still say no — and why this time is different
Newport has said no for years, citing environmental rules and the sheer impracticality of finding a palm-sized drive under many thousands of tonnes. The city worries about precedent: if they allow one man to dig, what happens when the next person claims a fortune in the ground?
The “new turn” is legal and technical. Howells is preparing a narrow judicial review focused on proportionality: does a time-limited, insured pilot excavation fall within legitimate waste-management discretion? Alongside that, his team is seeking a controlled works permit that leans on modern remediation standards normally used for asbestos zones. **This is about framing the hunt as cleanup, not chaos.**
We’ve all had that moment when a small mistake grows teeth. The difference here is the scale, and the patience to wait it out. Let’s be honest: no one really does this every day. If the council blinks, it will be because risk has been translated into clauses, monitors, and measurable outcomes — not because of the size of the jackpot.
The method, step by step
Start where the data is strongest. Fix the date the drive was binned, the skip’s route, and the cell that was active that week. Landfills are layered daily, sometimes with GPS logs for compaction routes. Cross-reference weather and weight tickets to estimate settlement. You’re shrinking a haystack before even touching hay.
That’s followed by a sandbox phase. Build a mini line off-site with identical soils and e-waste, then stress-test. How fine must shredders go to expose a 2.5-inch drive without damage? What moisture triggers shorting risks? Run it like an aircraft certification, not a treasure hunt. The moment anything fails, you stop and adjust. No hero moves.
The live site is a choreography. Negative-pressure tents to keep fibres and odours in. Gas monitoring every few metres. Material moves on belts where optical sensors flag metal signatures; robotic arms make the pick, not human hands. Each candidate goes into antistatic bags, then to a clean bench for triage. If they hit pay dirt, the drive goes into a forensic chain-of-custody tube and straight to a lab with chip-off capabilities.
Most failures in high-stakes recoveries happen off the field. People rush, they skip documentation, optimism fogs judgement. The fix is boring on purpose: checklists, dual sign-off, and a kill switch that any junior can hit. The fastest way is typically the safest way, because you don’t have to redo a mess. If it sounds like aviation, that’s on purpose.
There’s a mindset shift too. You’re not “finding a fortune”; you’re executing a remediation programme with a potential upside. Language matters when regulators are looking over your shoulder. Speak in readings, not dreams. Put everything in writing.
One more thing: plan the end before the start. Where does each tonne go? Which landfill cell gets re-capped, which gets treated, who signs it off? Post-project monitoring calms nerves. And it’s honest. The site should leave the neighbourhood a little cleaner than it was.
“If they let me open a small window into that hill, we won’t leave a fingerprint,” Howells says. “And if we’re wrong, we close it and walk away. But we have to be allowed to try.”
- Performance bond placed in escrow to cover remediation and closure.
- Pilot trench under negative pressure with continuous gas monitoring.
- Optical and magnetic sorting to reduce manual handling.
- Forensic custody protocol for any storage device found.
- Community e-waste line funded as a permanent benefit.
What this hunt says about modern value
It’s a neat parable: value no longer glints in a stream; it hides on a platter smaller than a postcard. The folklore of treasure has migrated from caves to data centres, from maps to seed phrases. That shift makes losses feel both ridiculous and unbearably heavy.
Howells is polarising because he’s a mirror. He insists that mistakes can be unmade if you refuse to stop. Some people see obsession. Others see grit. The landfill sits there, huge and indifferent, the world’s most awkward safe.
If this story turns, it won’t be with a triumphant shovel held aloft, but with a permit stamped, a quiet tent going up, and a conveyor belt humming. Maybe the search fails. Maybe a lab boots a weathered drive and a passphrase screen blinks awake. Either way, the hunt has already changed what we expect from waste, from luck, from the way we measure “too late”.
| Point clé | Détail | Intérêt pour le lecteur |
|---|---|---|
| The bond | Escrowed performance bond to cover environmental risk | Shows how money can de-risk public decisions |
| The method | Staged, tented, sensor-led excavation with robotic sorting | Reframes “digging” as controlled remediation |
| The turn | Narrow legal route plus community benefit offer | Explains why a longstanding “no” could become a “maybe” |
FAQ :
- Who is the man searching the landfill?James Howells, a former IT worker from Newport, Wales, who mistakenly discarded a hard drive in 2013.
- How much Bitcoin is on the drive?He believes it holds 7,500 BTC, worth about $649 million at recent prices, depending on market swings.
- Why won’t the council allow a dig?They cite environmental risk, regulatory obligations, and the difficulty of safely disturbing a capped landfill cell.
- Could the hard drive even work after 12 years?It’s uncertain. If the casing stayed intact and moisture exposure was limited, chip-level recovery might still be possible.
- What’s the “new turn” in the story?A push for a tightly controlled pilot excavation backed by a performance bond, paired with a legal route that frames the work as remediation.
The performance bond angle is smart; reframing this as controlled remediation rather than a treasure dig might finally move the needle. Two questions: who owns chain-of-custody if a candidate drive turns up, and what happens to the pilot trench if gas readings spike mid-shift?