Lost in the landfill for 12 years! With $750 million bitcoins gone, he chooses to issue a token linked to the lost asset.

British man James Howells finally gave up. After 12 years of searching, he's done looking for his discarded hard drive. That little device? It holds 8,000 bitcoins. Worth about $750 million today. Gone.

Oops... 8,000 bitcoins just... disappeared

James grew up in Newport, Wales. Born in the 1980s. Mom worked with microchips. Got him into computers early. By 13, he was building them. Eventually became an engineer.

He discovered bitcoin way back in late 2008. Started mining on February 15, 2009, using an old Dell laptop. The Daily Telegraph calls him one of the first bitcoin miners ever. The New Yorker said there were maybe five miners total back then. Five!

Mining didn't last long though. His girlfriend hated it. The noise. The heat. Then in 2010, he spilled lemonade on the computer. Ruined it. He took it apart, sold some pieces, threw others away. The hard drive with those bitcoin keys? It sat in a drawer.

Sometime between June and August 2013, that hard drive ended up in the trash. His ex-girlfriend Hafina took it to the landfill. She says James asked her to. He kind of thinks she should take some blame. It's messy.

"I wasn't really thinking about bitcoin then," James remembered later. "Got distracted. Had some kids. Renovated my house. Bitcoin? Completely forgot about it until it showed up in the news."

The Guardian figured the drive was buried about 3-5 feet underground at Newport's Docksway landfill. James seemed resigned to it back then.

The city council noted it might be under 25,000 cubic meters of garbage. That's around 110,000 to 200,000 tons of waste. The former landfill manager pinpointed it to an area called Cell-2. Just 15,000 tons of trash there! The whole landfill? 1.4 million tons.

Bitcoin went up. His hopes crashed down.

As bitcoin prices soared, James got desperate. He kept asking to search. The council kept saying no.

December 2017: Request denied. Too expensive. Bad for environment. Might start a "gold rush."

January 2021: He offered 25% of the bitcoins (worth £52.5 million then) to Newport's 316,000 residents. About £175 each! Still no.

The council seems tired of him. "Since 2013, we've been hearing about this supposed bitcoin hard drive," they basically said. "We can't dig up the landfill. It would cost millions and damage the environment. And who knows if the drive would even work?"

James insists it would work. Something about cobalt protective layers and glass platters. When there's $750 million on the line, you convince yourself of things.

He got serious. Created detailed plans. A hedge fund offered to pay for everything (for half the bitcoins, of course). His budget: £5 million for a 9-12 month search. By August 2022, he'd upgraded the plan. AI robot arms! Drones! Boston Dynamics robot dogs patrolling! Budget: £10-11 million.

To win local support, he talked about building a community-owned mining facility powered by solar or wind energy.

September 2023: His lawyers sent an open letter threatening to sue.

November 2023: Another letter begging for site access.

By September 2025: Those bitcoins were worth $750 million. He sued for £495 million. The council argued they actually owned the drive now, according to waste disposal rules.

January 9, 2025: The judge threw out his case. "No reasonable grounds," they said. "No prospect of success."

James told reporters he was "extremely disappointed." But he had a new plan – cryptocurrency time!

Plan B: Make new money from lost money

He gave up the search. Not the dream though.

Back in May, James hinted on social media about tokenizing 21% of his 8,000 bitcoins. Launch date: October 1 at TOKEN 2049 Singapore. Goal: raise $75 million. Then... silence. The plan seemed dead. I mean, asking for $75 million based on bitcoins nobody can find seems a bit much.

This month, he unveiled yet another plan. He'll issue 800 billion Ceiniog Coins (INI). Built on bitcoin. Using OP_RETURN. Integrated with Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals. Each INI supposedly equals 1 satoshi of those buried bitcoins.

James got pretty dramatic: "To all the senior and outstanding gatekeepers who've impeded me for over a decade: You can block the doors! You can control the courts! But you cannot stop the blockchain! Cryptocurrency has won!"

But let's be real. The hard drive is still lost. INI has no actual backing. It's just... words.

Cryptocurrency might be winning. James's token scheme? Probably not so much.