$BTC "He buried his future… and now he digs up his past"

In 2013, James Howells, a computer engineer from Wales, became the protagonist of one of the most painful stories in the crypto world. After mining 8,000 BTC in the early days of Bitcoin —when it was worth just a few dollars— he stored the private keys on the hard drive of a laptop that he accidentally discarded while cleaning up.

Convinced that the hard drive was unimportant, he threw it in the trash. Weeks later, upon reviewing his backups, he realized the mistake: he had thrown away the equivalent of over 500 million dollars (according to recent prices) into a landfill.

Since then, James has been fighting a battle against the local government of Newport, which denies him access to the landfill for ecological and logistical reasons. He, for his part, has designed complex plans, including the use of tracking dogs, artificial intelligence, and even funding from investors who believe in his cause, to unearth his lost fortune.

Beyond the money, what James is digging up is his own past, his carelessness, his regret… and the hope that someday, perhaps, amidst piles of waste, he will recover the keys to a destiny that he himself threw away.