SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Former crypto miner James Howells admits he is 'very upset' at the ruling.
The legal arguments over $750M worth of Bitcoin buried in a Welsh dump have ended unhappily for a man who lost his crypto HDD in the trash 12 years ago. On Thursday, Judge Keyser KC of the British High Court ruled James Howells' case had no reasonable chance of success at a trial. Therefore, the court sided with the council and struck out Mr Howell's legal action, in which he had hoped to gain legal access to the dump for excavation or get £495M ($604M) in compensation from the council.
We last wrote about Mr Howells's trials and tribulations in October last year, when he, backed by a consortium, decided to sue the local council "because they won't give me back my bin (trash) bag." At that time, the lost 8,000 Bitcoins were valued at $538M; today, they would be worth over $750M.
Howells' unfortunate predicament began in August 2013, when he discovered his girlfriend had taken his old laptop hard drive, which contained a wallet with Bitcoins he had mined back in 2009, to the council dump. However, Howells admits he put the device in the trash after clearing some old office bits and pieces. According to Howells, you can read precisely what happened in an excerpt from the ruling, reproduced below.
There are two major legal problems concerning this treasure in the trash. First, under UK law, anything you throw in the garbage to be collected by the council becomes the council's legal property. Second, Howells' case falls foul of the UK's six-year statute of limitations. Although the lost Bitcoins were known about in 2013, Howells only decided to sue the council in 2024.
The BBC shared some post-judgment comments from Howells in a report yesterday. In them, he admitted he was "very upset" about the decision. His statements didn't address that the council now owns the HDD/data. However, he had some interesting arguments to counter the six-year statute of limitations mentioned by the judge.
Howells told the BBC that he had been "trying to engage with Newport City Council in every way which is humanly possible for the past 12 years." This could reasonably explain the delay in legal action. He also suggested that if he had made it to trial, "there was so much more that could have been explained" and that it would have made a difference in the legal decision.
A distraught Howells repeated his offer to share the $750M crypto treasure with the council and donate 10% to the local community.
Previous: UK Man Sues City Over Discarded Bitcoin-filled Hard Drive
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2025, @06:06PM
Yes that was the first time I found out about it, I think September 2009 from what I remember. I did actually mine it though, ended up with many many hundreds of BTC using nothing more than some CPUs.
However I never thought it would grow this big so I sold a good chunk of them for a mortgage deposit in 2011-12 or so. Ironically shortly after buying the flat BTC shot up in price so much I could have bought the flat outright without the 35 year debt around my neck, but there you go.
As a friend said back then "it could have gone either way", BTC could well have dropped to zero as much as it shot up, there was no way of knowing at the time.
The remaining BTC I held on for the next decade or so until regulations caught up, VASP certified CeFi investments showed up, and then I decided to invest my BTC to generate income so I could finally leave my crappy job and enjoy life. However I got defrauded of the entire lot, so I'm back to square one now.
It was a lesson for me. For every BTC millionaire out there, there are many who lost out, either due to losing their BTC through fraud (such as myself), carelessness (like the guy in TFA throwing away his wallet) or just missing out of the chance to get some when it was within reach.
There is no point being upset about the past misses, rather than dwell in regret on how rich I could have been if only I held onto the BTC I concentrate on how I can improve my life in future. I likewise don't think I would have spent decades locked in legal action for the right to dig through tons of garbage in order for the hope of finding the HDD (if it even still works and has recoverable data on it, it could well have been crushed by tons of garbage by that time).
Saying that, over the years BTC for me as ceased to be what it was originally designed for, namely an internet currency. It has become nothing more then speculation in the hope for people to get rich by selling it on. The crypto space is also rife with fraudsters so the only benefit of buying crypto is to put it in your hard wallet and leave it there until you want to sell to buy some real, income producing assets.