How did James Howells lose his Bitcoin hard drive? What we know as Welsh engineer gives up on his search after 12 years

James Howells has officially called it quits on his years-long search for his lost Bitcoin hard drive.

As reported by the Financial Express, the Welsh Engineer accidentally threw out a hard drive that had 8000 bitcoins on it while cleaning out his office 12 years ago, in 2013. As per CNN, he thought it had no data on it and left it in a trash bag for his then-partner to take to the garbage dump. It was only later that he realized what he had lost. In the years since, the price of the cryptocurrency has only skyrocketed, and it is now worth $800 million.

James Howells never found the disc, despite even attempting to purchase a landfill site to scour for it. The Newport City Council thwarted his attempt, which thereby prevented him from rummaging through the trash. As reported by FearBuck on X, in as little as 5 years, the Bitcoins on the hard drive will be worth about $8 billion.

James Howells said he was ready to "take his chances" for $800 million

Back in February, James Howells took to X to reveal his plans of buying the landfill, noting at the time that his "funding" was "secured." When asked at the time just how much purchasing the site would cost, and if he remembered the make of the drive, he said:

"Lots… long term maintenance is expensive. The model no, the size and the manufacturer brand, are all known. So yes we know enough about this drive to easily distinguish from other drives."

He also responded to another comment suggesting that the drive would have degraded by then:

"Size of data to recover is tiny in size (3/4kb) - which would be located on one single sector of the platter. Additionally we only need the first half of the PK (could brute force the rest) which again increases chances of successful recovery. For $800m I'll take my chances :)."

As reported by CNN at the time, by then, James Howells had already tried his best to gain access to the site, located in Newport. He reportedly offered the local city council over $70 million in 2021 for permission to rummage through the site, to no avail:

"The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area,” a spokeswoman said at the time. “The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds – without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order."

Stay tuned to Soap Central for more.

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