James Howells It has a plan that, for him, makes perfect sense: buying a landfill, digging thousands of tons of trash, transporting each piece to a scanner with artificial intelligence technology, installing a magnetic treadmill to capture metallic objects and finally find The hard drive containing the Bitcoin () treasure access key valued at about $ 800 million (R $ 4.57 billion).
“This seems logical,” says Howells.
More than a decade ago, he tries to negotiate with the Newport City Council, in Wales, to gain access to the landfill where he believes the HD ended up in 2013. He has hired a data recovery company, an operator of excavation and even former landfill director to map the site. However, the city has refused its attempts to excavate and plans to close the landfill definitively.
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Now Howells proposes a final solution: if you can’t dig, want to buy the landfill.
A HIGH RISK BET
Howells believes his proposal is advantageous for everyone: he would clean the site and could convert it into a park or even reactivate it as a garbage deposit.
“Who has never played something valuable out of accident?” Asks Howells. The difference is that, in his case, this error can be worth almost $ 1 billion.
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The city, however, states that, even if found, the HD would belong to the city. In addition, it estimates that the attempted recovery would have a prohibitive cost and no guarantee of success. A British judge recently rejected Howells attempted to force the city to allow excavation, stating that the plan “has no realistic successful perspective.”
Howells argues that the HD still belongs to him, as he was discarded without his permission for a third party. He even offered part of the fortune in Bitcoin to City Hall, but the proposal was rejected.
The dream of recovering lost bitcoins
Cryptocurrency experts see the Howells saga as a reflex of the volatile crypto market, where a simple decision can mean gaining or losing fortunes.
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“The experience of many crypto investors has been similar, although not so extreme,” says Iwa Salami, Fintech regulatory professor at the University of East London.
While critics see Howells’ search as a delirium, he believes mathematics is in his favor.
“This HD is worth $ 800 million. This means that I am willing to examine each piece of trash until you find it, ”he says.
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Newport City Hall, in turn, maintains its position. In a 2023 statement, he said that “he cannot help Mr. Howells on this issue” and that this decision “has not changed.”
For Howells, giving up is not an option. “Some people can overcome a loss and move on. Others simply can’t. ”
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