I don't know if you've ever heard the story of a man named James Howell who lost a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins in a landfill. It was lost back in 2013 and at that time if you checked the rates, it was around $100 to $200 per Bitcoin.
So he basically lost at least over $800,000 at the time. That's sad but losing that kind of money in a landfill, well it's worth searching for it but his estimates for searching and standing a higher chance of finding the drive would cost him over $10 million dollars.
This is certainly the reason he didn't bother looking for it in 2013. Fast forward to today with a single Bitcoin shooting pass $100,000 it sent the value of his 8000 BTC all the way to about $660 million. Of course BTC is lingering around the $80K mark and that's how I got the estimates.
This changes absolutely everything because spending $10 million to find over $600 million is more than reasonable, you better sell your soul to the course, lol just kidding.
Why can't he start the digging though? Well he would need permission from the state or let me say UK courts to do that. You can't just wake up one day and start digging a landfill. He has already spent so many years trying to get permission to dig but the courts keep turning him down.
He had a recent appeal to dig and that was also turned down by the UK court of Appeal. The judge said to him that his case has no real chance of success. I can understand the court though. They are unwilling to risk the effects of digging a landfill just for the possibility that a hard drive is there and also the possibility that it's working well enough to retrieve that money.
But James has no plans of giving up and let's be honest if it were to be you, you wouldn't give up too on finding your lost $660 million dollars. James now plans to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Bro is claiming his human rights have been violated because they told him no, you can't search for your shit.
But the problem is that even if the ECHR sides with him, they can't necessarily force the UK to change its decision. The only thing they'll be capable of doing is to pressure the courts to reconsider his request.
But let's be reasonable, he just filed a complaint against a court that should grant him a request, do you think this will make things better? Hell no.
His time is running out too. Newport City Council has also refused to let him search the landfill, and the site is expected to close by 2025 or 2026.
I wish I could be more optimistic about this but I think his bitcoins is lost forever and besides, that will remain in liquidity forever as well.
After going into the details of this story, I have only learned more on how important it is to keep your crypto wallets or hard drives or storage safe. Once you lose it, there's a chance it's lost forever.
Stay safe out there crypto owners.