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The ability to keep your Bitcoin stash securely stored in a central location is one of the biggest appeals of the cryptocurrency, but a man who’s spent more than a decade trying to recover a hard drive containing the keys to a fortune has resorted to filing a massive lawsuit against a town council that’s rejected his request to search a landfill in the hopes of getting it back.
By this point, I feel like most people are at least familiar with the mechanics of Bitcoin, but if you’re still not in the loop when it comes to how it works, here’s a quick primer.
Bitcoin may have tangible value (a single one is worth around $65,000 as of this writing), but it’s defined as an intangible asset because it doesn’t exist in the same way physical currency does; the cryptocurrency is stored on a decentralized blockchain and can only be accessed with a “wallet” containing the private keys that can be used to “unlock” them.
There is software and apps that can be harnessed as a wallet, but they come with vulnerabilities you don’t really have to worry about if you opt for a physical one in the form of a hard drive that can be used to store the data that serves as the key to unlocking the Bitcoin in your possession.
According to Wales Online, that was the approach James Howells of the Welsh city of Newport opted for to manage the portfolio of 8,000 Bitcoin he’d managed to amass as an early adopter who began to mine the cryptocurrency shortly after it was rolled out in 2009.
Unfortunately, that hard drive looked a lot like another one with nothing on it that he intended to throw away while cleaning out his office in the summer of 2013 before realizing he’d accidentally tossed out the one containing Bitcoin worth approximately $1 million at the time.
That number had risen closer to $12 million by the time Howells approached a member of the Newport town council in November 2013 to inquire about attempting to recover the hard drive from the landfill.
His request was rebuffed, and the council has spent the past decade citing environmental concerns while justifying its decision to prevent him from searching the landfill even though he’s offered to give them 10% of the Bitcoin he believes can still be recovered from the hard drive despite the time that’s elapsed—which would amount to $52 million due to its approximately $520 million valuation.
Now, Howells has decided to file a $647 million lawsuit against the council while citing the damages he asserts they’ve inflicted by denying his attempts to comb through the landfill (he’s confident he’s identified the area where the hard drive ended up and believes he’d need no more than three years to find it with the help of a search team he’s already recruited).
The council has pushed back against the lawsuit by saying Howells’ case relies on a “fundamentally weak claim” and cites the “huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area” to explain its decision to prevent him from mounting an excavation effort.
Howells also acknowledged he’s primarily relying on the lawsuit as leverage to get the council to cave, and given what’s at stake, I can’t say I blame him for doing everything he can to get the hard drive back.