A British man has reportedly sued his municipality for hundreds of millions of dollars for not allowing him to dig up his old hard drive containing Bitcoin (BTC) from a landfill.
According to a new report from WalesOnline, James Howells has filed a $647 million lawsuit against Newport City Council for preventing him from retrieving his hard drive for more than a decade after a misunderstanding led to it being thrown into a recycling center dumped.
Howells says he tried to contact the city for more than a decade but was largely ignored. He even went so far as to finance and assemble a team to carry out the recovery – which required excavating 100,000 tonnes of waste – as well as offering the council 10 tonnes of waste. % of Bitcoin recovered.
According to Howells, the hard drive contains 8,000 Bitcoins, currently worth more than $500 million. His then-partner accidentally threw away a garbage bag containing his BTC wallet after putting it there while cleaning up some equipment.
Howells’ team said that if the hard drive were found, there would be about an 80% chance that the coins would be recovered.
However, the council rejected his proposal to launch a search due to environmental concerns.
A municipal spokesperson stated this in the report.
“The council has told Mr Howells several times that excavations are not possible under our environmental permit and that such work would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. The municipality is the only body authorized to carry out work on the site.”
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