He finally gave up after 12 years hunting for his Hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoin.

James Howells learned about Bitcoin in December 2008, just a month after the whitepaper publishing.
Being an IT specialist, he developed interest and started mining. By 2009 he had 8,000 Bitcoin.
At the time Bitcoin was worth almost nothing.
One particular day, he had an accidental liquid spill on his laptop which spoilt it.
But he was a sharp guy so he kept the hard drive with him.
Comes Summer 2013, he was clearing out his house.
Two hard drives on his desk.
One blank and one with the Bitcoin wallet.
He put one in a black bag and left it in the hallway.
Assuming it was rubbish, her then partner took it to the Docksway dumpsite in Newport, Wales.
James comes back and realizes a mistake had just happened.
Quickly, drives to the dumpsite to correct it. But it's already too late.
Brother is in shock. He has lost a whooping 8K BTC worth $900K at the time.
By November 2013 the drive was already buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste.
Guess what happened? Bitcoin had gone up 4X. His stack was now worth $4M.
But, James was a strong man, he accepted his fortune was gone and he had messed up.
It however kept eating him up. The skyrocketing Bitcoin wasn't giving him peace of mind.
$152M worth of Bitcoin burried in a dumpsite. You can imagine the pain and sleepless nights he was having.
In 2017, he stopped accepting it and went back to Newport City Council.
Proposed a full excavation of the site. He would pay for everything.
They said no to his plea with claims of
challenges with environmental permits, emissions of dangerous gases like methane etc.
He did not give up. James went back every year after that.
In 2021, Bitcoin hit all time highs.
The drive was now worth over $300 million.
He offered the council $70 million just for permission to dig.
They still said no to him.
Told him the hard drive became a city property the moment it entered the dump site.
Frustrated by the council, he sued them for £495 million in 2024.
But in January 2025, the High Court dismissed the case with the Judge saying it had "no realistic prospect of succeeding."
His final move, he offered to buy the dumpsite after the council said they had plans to close it and convert into a solar farm.
Still, the council ignored his buy request.
Today, more than $600M worth of BTC is rotting somewhere in a hard drive covered in over 100K tonnes of waste.