A man from the UK named James Howells is suing his local council to try to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC, currently valued around $647 million. And that’s precisely how much he’s suing them for—since he’s blaming them for his not having it.
Back in 2013, Howells’ then-partner mistakenly tossed out the hard drive along with a bunch of other garbage. At the time, Bitcoin was already worth a little bit less than £1 million—and the value of those coins has risen quite a bit in the years since.
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Now, for good reason, he wants to find the hard drive again.
It should be noted that he didn’t only just come up with the idea. Howells has been trying to convince his local government to let him dig them up for over a decade now. He says his requests have been mostly ignored. He’s even taking it upon himself to assemble an excavation team that can dig through 100 tons of garbage to find the hard drives.
Should the hard drives be recovered, Howells thinks there is an 80 percent chance that the coins on it would be retrievable. If it all works out, he has offered the council 10% of the recovered Bitcoin: $65 million worth. But, citing environmental concerns, the council has rejected his proposal to dig through over a decade’s worth of garbage.
The council issued a report wherein a spokesperson said, “The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. The council is the only body authorized to carry out operations on the site.”
The excavation would cost $13 million and take between 18 and 36 months, plus another year to restore things to their original state. Howells says the council won’t have to pay for any of it, plus he’d give them 10 percent if he finds it.
In an interview, Howells said the lawsuit wasn’t the main thing—he just wanted to “leverage” the council into letting him do the excavation. You’d think that would entice the council into saying yes, but so far, they don’t seem like they’re going to take the bait.