James Howells has seen the value of his hard disk rocket to more than £450m. A landfill hiding £1.5 billion in Bitcoin is being guarded round the clock with a network of video cameras to keep out metal detectors hoping to strike lucky. Early crypto investor James Howells, 38, made the calamitous mistake of accidentally throwing away 8,000 Bitcoins ten years ago and is now launching a legal fight to get them back.
A misunderstanding saw his partner throw away the only hard drive containing the access to his crypto assets - which has now rocketed in value to more than £450m - as he had been temporarily storing it in a black bin bag. Distraught James has been trying to recover the disc from the council-run dump ever since and has narrowed the potential search down to an area which would mean excavating 100,000 tonnes of rubbish buried under the grassy hills