UK to close landfills with $768 million worth of Bitcoin hard drives

Author: Martin Young, CoinTelegraph; Compilation: Baishui, Golden Finance

A landfill in the UK is reportedly about to close, and a man is working to retrieve his lost hard drive with 8,000 bitcoins on it.

The landfill is located in Newport, Wales, east of Cardiff, the capital of the country, and is expected to close in fiscal 2025-26, according to BBC News on February 9.

A Newport City Council spokesman told the BBC: "The landfill has been mined since the early 21st century and is about to reach its service life, so the city council is developing plans to close and cap the landfill over the next two years."

The city council has obtained planning permission to build solar farms on some of the land, which was approved in August.

There may be a large number of bitcoins stored on a hard drive that local IT worker James Howells claims was discarded after his former partner mistakenly discarded in 2013.

He claims the hard drive contains about 8,000 bitcoins he mined in 2009 and is currently worth about $768 million.

Howells, who was involved in a decade-long legal dispute with Newport City Council, sued Newport City Council for permission to dig around the landfill in an attempt to retrieve the hard drive—if the hard drive is found, You will get a portion of the hard drive - or get compensation for losses.

In January, the judge dismissed the case, saying Howells lost the case by saying “no realistic hope of winning” in a full trial.

He claims that AI experts use technology to easily find hard drives, and that it is free for both the city council and the public.

In October, however, the city council said that under its environmental permits, the excavation could not be carried out because of “a huge negative impact on the surrounding environment.”

Docks Way Landfill in Wales. Source: Google Maps

Web3 executive Al Leong said there appeared to be 8,000 BTC on the missing drive. This black hole is the hiding place for a large number of lost bitcoins, which may account for 13% of the Bitcoin supply, about 3 million.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said quantum computing will be able to crack bitcoin in “lost wallets” and re-invest it into circulation, with some analysts warning that it will put selling pressure on Bitcoin.