In 2022, Howells said if he can’t go into the dump, he’ll send Boston Dynamics robotic dogs to do the digging for him. That was part of a larger, $11 million business plan in which he proposed spending three years excavating the landfill to find his hard drive, while also turning the site into a mining facility. Newport did not go for that, either.

Buried deep in a Welsh landfill, beneath layers of years-old garbage, there is a hard drive that holds the key to almost $800 million in bitcoin – or so James Howells believes, after accidentally throwing the drive away in 2013.

James Howells has begged officials to let him dig through a South Wales landfill to find a lost Bitcoin wallet that he says is worth around $800 million.

British IT worker James Howells plans to buy a landfill in Newport, South Wales, to recover a hard drive containing Bitcoin worth nearly Rs 6,500 crore. He lost the device in 2013 after his then-partner mistakenly threw it away.