A British court refused to hear a search from a Welsh man who requested the local authorities to allow him to excavate a city landfill site, to find a hard drive with bitcoins discarded as far back as 2013 .James Howells from the Valley city of Newport confirms, that in 2013 year his girlfriend accidentally threw away a harddisk, which at that moment stored about 7,5 thousand. bitcoins. At today’s rate of this cryptocurrency – in dollar equivalent – this is
more than 700 million. He requested the local council to either allow him to excavate the dump site or to pay the amount as compensation. But the judge decided that there were no real
legal prospects for the seeker. The Newport authorities explained that by law the discarded hard disk would always become the ownership of the owners of the landfill. In addition, as the Mayor’s Office reminded the
Mayor’s Office that conducting any excavation in the trash is prohibited by the regulations of the environment. Howells has promised the local council 10% of the amount of
the from the sale of bitcoins if the search is successful, But the defendants’ attorneys called this offer an attempt to force the officials to fund the excavation. The landfill, where the Howells’ hard disk is containing in total more than
1.4 million tonnes of trash. But Vallian states that he has been relatively accurately determined where to find the storage of bitcoins: on this site of waste only
100 tonnes.
But not one of the people in power, not willing to talk to me normally, ” the British man complained. He is sure that he
is very likely to get the information from the disk, though over the years spent in the landfill,
his hull is surely rusted. Howells says he was among the first enthusiasts of the bitcoin, and in 2009 mined a significant amount of this cryptocurrency. The Welsh man told journalists
that the keyboard of a laptop with the help of which he “mined” bitcoins, had accidentally filled with lemonade. After that
he extracted from it a hard disk, on which the keys to the cryptocurrency were stored. Howells told the Times newspaper that he threw the disk accidentally, confusing it with another exactly same disk that
he didn’t need. Howells also confirmed that the mistake was in fact made by his then friend, who physically delivered
the disk to the dump. She claimed that James had asked her to dispose of the accumulated trash, which she
did. Howells repeatedly requested the City Council of Newport to permit
him to to excavate to find the ill-gotten disk, but was never rejected. In 2023 year he decided to sue the Council this attempt and it ended for Howells finally failed. In December of last year the
price of bitcoin for the first exceeded 100 thousand dollars. dollars. The new record bitcoin set in
a fewhoursafterthat,asPresident-electoftheUSPresidentDonaldTrumpannouncedthatheintendstoappointtheChiefoftheCommissionOnPricePaperand(SecuritiesandExchangeCommission,SEC)nowitscurrentmemberPaulAtkins.It is believed that AtkinsismuchmorefavorabletocryptocurrenciesthanthecurrentheadoftheregulatorGaryGensler.
