Aside from the legendary story of 10,000 BTC being exchanged for two pizzas, few tales vividly demonstrate the immense value of cryptocurrencies like the story of the hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins being mistakenly thrown in the trash.
The story of losing 8,000 Bitcoins is retold every bull market, and this cycle is no exception. Over the 12 years from 2013 to today, the value of these 8,000 Bitcoins has risen from $1.4 million to $1 billion, yet they remain buried in a garbage heap the size of 15 football fields. The man who lost this fortune is named James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, UK.
Recently, there have been rumors that he has given up searching, while others say he still holds on to his faith. In fact, James has not given up; he plans to tokenize the ownership of this BTC and issue a new token, launching an ICO later this year.
The summer night when the hard drive was thrown away.
In August 2013, James and his partner Hafina lived in a modest townhouse in Newport, Wales, a coastal town famous for its coal and steel port.
They have two sons still in diapers; although the house is often filled with laughter, taking care of the children is not easy. James often works from home, taking on the role of an engineer maintaining emergency response systems across Wales, ensuring that critical equipment like alarm lines and backup power supplies function correctly while often having to put the children to sleep, which is understandably exhausting.
To alleviate fatigue, he planned a little vacation to relax completely, so he arranged with friends to spend a few days at a nearby beach, naming the trip 'The Boys' Holiday'. On the eve of departure, James began to tidy up the cluttered study.
"Vacation must include drinking, but I don't want to deal with the aftermath of a hangover," was this moment of inspiration that changed James's life.
Hafina walked in and began helping him pick up the scattered engineering drawings, discarded network cables, and various electronic components. The sea breeze blew in through the half-closed blinds, carrying a salty scent. It was late at night, and the children in the next room had already fallen into a deep sleep. James placed three or four bags full of clutter by the door, and after tidying up, the two lay in bed, drowsy.
James hoped Hafina would throw the trash away on the way to drop the kids at daycare the next morning. But Hafina refused: "That's not my job; you do it yourself." Just before falling asleep, he suddenly thought of that hard drive.
Engineers have an almost instinctive sensitivity to data security: they know that hard drives often contain critical information such as system configurations, logs, private keys, etc., and losing them could lead to irrecoverable important information, so engineers do not casually throw away hard drives. So he kept thinking about that hard drive, reminding himself to take it out.
But exhaustion soon overwhelmed him, and he never had the chance to take out that hard drive.
James's lost hard drive of the same kind
The next day, Hafina woke up early; she didn't know exactly what was in those three or four bags, but she still took the trash to the landfill as James wished before he fell asleep. Around nine, James woke up and groggily asked, "Did you take the bags to the landfill?" Hafina said yes, and James thought, "Oh fuck, she threw the trash away." But he was still groggy and quickly fell asleep again.
Mining for 10 weeks, earning 8,000 BTC
This discarded hard drive is what James has been relentlessly searching for over the past twelve years; it contains 8,000 Bitcoins he mined early on, now worth $1 billion.
That was in 2009, when Bitcoin was still in the proof-of-concept phase, with only a few nodes on the network. James recalled, "I knew I was one of the few miners because when connecting to the network, it would show 'You are connected to x nodes' in the lower right corner."
James was influenced by his mother working in a microchip factory from a young age and began assembling computers at the age of 13, spending every day online. As an adult, he has held various IT jobs and is a neoliberal. After the 2008 financial crisis, James also viewed fiat currency as a 'scam,' filled with suspicion towards those in power, which naturally made him favor the vision of Bitcoin.
In a forum, he learned about Bitcoin for the first time. The Bitcoin system operates by connecting multiple computers to form a large and secure network, which immediately attracted him. It reminded him of two applications he liked: Napster (a rogue service for sharing music files) and SETI @home (a project that allows users to combine computing power to search for extraterrestrial life).
So James used his Dell XPS laptop to download free software and started mining Bitcoin, becoming an early adopter of the technology, and thus earned Bitcoin. This led many to believe that James had communicated with Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and that the hard drive might even contain Satoshi's IP address, which is more valuable than 8,000 BTC.
But for James, the most core wealth remains those 8,000 Bitcoins. To prevent being harmed by malicious actors, he intentionally blurred the figures when disclosing numbers: initially stating it was 4,000, then 7,500, until he finally admitted the true number was 8,000 in recent years.
At that time, he had put his laptop in the bedroom, and the noise of the fan buzzing while the laptop was running prevented his partner Hafina from sleeping, making her feel restless and irritable, leading her to complain multiple times.
Although he had no intention of spending the Bitcoin he mined because it was not valuable at the time and had no reason to believe Bitcoin would be worth anything in the future, James initially mined just for fun; "it was just an experiment." So he had no resistance and simply stopped mining. The 10 weeks spent trying this new cryptocurrency craze cost him about ten pounds in electricity to keep the computer running.
Not long after, James spilled a cup of lemonade on his laptop; despite his efforts to clean it up, it still wouldn't work properly. He sold the parts, leaving the hard drive behind, and transferred all the photos and music to an Apple computer. The only thing he couldn't replicate was a small file containing the Bitcoin password, as it was incompatible with Apple's operating system.
He threw the hard drive into a drawer in most of our homes that 'wouldn't be touched for a long time' and then forgot about it for the next three years, focusing on work and family life.
Then, on that summer night in 2013, while James was chatting with his partner and tidying up the room, he casually threw that hard drive into the nearby black trash bag, along with a pile of cables and mice he deemed 'useless', which Hafina later tossed into the landfill. At that time, the 8,000 BTC was worth about $1.4 million.
His despair is as vast as 15 football fields.
The sunshine and waves of Cyprus did not soothe James's anxiety. Friends noticed that he always put down his drink before finishing it, with a gloomy expression.
"I'm feeling terrible and don't know why," he told those around him.
He stumbled upon a BBC report online: a 29-year-old Norwegian man used the money from selling a thousand Bitcoins to pay a down payment on a $400,000 apartment. The article stated that these Bitcoins were worth about $170,000 at the time. James realized: he had mined 8,000, which was seven times more than that Norwegian. By the fall of 2013, the total value of these coins had exceeded $1.4 million, while his engineer salary was only a few tens of thousands of pounds, and he often had to wake up at 3 AM to travel long distances to maintain the town's emergency response systems.
A sudden tightening in his chest, James hurried home and ran to the study to open the drawer: inside was only an empty hard drive, not the one containing the private keys and transaction records.
Panicking, he suddenly remembered that summer night months ago when the hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins was thrown into the trash bag by him.
He initially wanted to rush to the landfill, but was afraid others wouldn’t believe him: "Explaining Bitcoin to people is not easy." So for a month, he silently watched the market alone, seeing Bitcoin soar from a few dollars to hundreds, then thousands, and eventually to tens of thousands of dollars—his lost assets evaporating more and more absurdly.
Finally, when the value of this Bitcoin soared from $1.4 million to around $6 million, James could no longer hold back and confessed everything to Hafina. Hafina was stunned when she heard it but firmly encouraged him: "Go check the landfill; maybe there's still a chance."
Aerial view of the landfill, image source Google Maps
So they went to the Newcastle landfill. He told the manager, "I might have thrown a hard drive containing a Bitcoin private key here, worth $6 million in trash."
The manager fell silent for a moment and led them to a higher piece of land, and James's heart sank.
He saw the entire landfill, with piles of dirt, garbage, and waste forming mountains, covering an area as large as fifteen football fields. The garbage from three to four months ago should be three to five feet deep.
An employee who had worked at the landfill said, "People often come looking for things they accidentally threw away, even within 24 hours. We always allow them to quickly check the landfill. The moment they see the stuff in front of them, their faces drop. No one has ever recovered their belongings from this massive landfill; the possibility is zero."
But James also learned some good news: the landfill is not just a random pile; it has its own structure. The city has divided the landfill into different areas: asbestos is piled in one zone, regular household trash in another. "Once the hard drive is buried in a specific unit, locating it is not completely impossible, but you need permission from the city government."
After returning home, James opened Google Maps, carefully measuring the range and partition locations of the landfill: "Space is limited, although the amount of garbage is large, it is orderly piled, and I might be able to find it."
With hope and direction, he hurriedly called the city's waste management department, leaving a voicemail for a search request, wanting a search permit, but no one ever responded. At that time, James, who was waiting for a return call, did not know that he still wouldn't obtain that permit 12 years later.
Searching has become the main theme of his later life.
Since that day, searching for the Bitcoins has become the main line of his life.
He first submitted a formal application to the Newport City Council, pleading for permission to search the landfill. However, the council's response was repeatedly delayed: some questioned the environmental risks, others worried about public safety, and some thought it was just a 'pipe dream.'
Initially, Newport officials stated that if they found the hard drive, they would certainly return it, but later they took a harder stance. How could Howells be sure the hard drive was actually thrown into the landfill? They warned that the hard drive would likely be unusable: it could be destroyed on its way to a toxic burial site. Moreover, the environmental risks of retrieving the hard drive are too great.
James refuted after researching the hard drive's structure: although the shell is metal, the internal platters are coated with corrosion-resistant cobalt, providing strong pressure resistance and corrosion resistance; he also cited the 2003 Columbia space shuttle black box data recovery precedent and invited the Minneapolis company Ontrack Data Recovery to assess it. They optimistically estimated that as long as the platters were not shattered, 99% of the data could be rescued.
But all this technical analysis was mere talk in the eyes of municipal officials. In 2017, the city government formally rejected his request to search for the hard drive again, citing a consultant's statement: "There seems to be no feasible way to recover the hard drive." They even later took a tougher stance, declaring that searching for the hard drive was illegal.
As the value of Bitcoin continued to rise, James's obsession with finding the hard drive deepened, even considering suing the city government, which is a common action in the U.S. but rarely seen in the UK.
By early 2018, James had 'buried' over $100 million worth of Bitcoin in the landfill, but the council still wouldn't relent.
Unwilling to give up, James hired a legal team and filed for judicial review against the city council in the High Court, seeking permission to search the site. In court, he proposed to donate 25% of the profits from recovering the hard drive (approximately £200 million at the time) to the over 300,000 residents of Newport, averaging £175 each; he also envisioned turning Newport into the UK's first 'cryptocurrency center', establishing blockchain education and cryptocurrency payment outlets.
"If the hard drive can't be found or is damaged beyond recovery, who will bear the costs?" But the council retorted.
In 2022, James's team upgraded their plan again, intending to introduce AI robotic arms to identify trash, drones, and Boston Dynamics 'robot dogs' for security, and recruit dedicated environmental and data recovery experts, with the overall budget increasing to £10 million—£11 million. Meanwhile, venture capitalists expressed willingness to pay this budget, but the recovered Bitcoin would be split.
Recent news is that he spoke at the Bitcoin Conference in 2025, announcing his plan to purchase the land where the landfill is located.
The lost Bitcoins completely changed the trajectory of his life.
James's search continues, and he has paid a tremendous price for it.
Since the price of Bitcoin fluctuated between $50 and $266 in the summer of 2013, he has spent a full 11 years negotiating with the Newport City Council and the courts—conservatively estimating that his legal fees alone have exceeded $100,000. Some sarcastically remarked, "He should spend the money on Bitcoin instead of legal fees." Indeed, had he invested those legal fees directly into the market back then, he would also be a billionaire today.
Using another calculation method, James once raised $5 million in an attempt to buy the entire landfill.
From the perspective of opportunity cost, this investment seems even more absurd: had he raised $5 million in 2013, the year he lost the hard drive, not to buy that landfill but to reinvest in BTC at an average price of $192, he could have acquired about 26,500 coins; today, the market value of these 26,500 coins has reached $2.78 billion, more than 3.5 times the initial loss. In the most extreme scenario, if James had invested $100 each month since then, he would have accumulated 10 BTC after nine years, enough to cover his expenses for the rest of his life.
James also tried to restart mining a few years ago, using a set of ten S9 processors—these powerful processors ran non-stop for a year and a half. However, the economic environment for Bitcoin mining changed too drastically; he felt it was no longer worth it: the electricity costs exceeded the value of the Bitcoins he mined. This adventure was another failure for him.
Ultimately, he 'messed up' three times in his pursuit of the hard drive: once by losing the hard drive, once by wasting the funds he raised on expensive lawsuits and plans, and once by deciding to give up on mining again.
But this was not the biggest failure; for James, the greatest distress caused by the loss of those 8,000 BTC was that it completely changed the trajectory of his life.
After separating, James and Hafina never spoke again.
In the first few years of searching for the Bitcoins, James’s partner Hafina was also deeply troubled.
Strangers, media reports, and friends around him constantly tag her online to comment on her and evaluate their family's experience of losing 8,000 Bitcoins, after all, she was the one who threw away the garbage bag containing the hard drive.
"It's not my fault," Hafina was already tired of explaining everything and listening to the story of lost wealth: "He begged me to take out the trash; I was just doing what he asked. I really hope he can find it because it will ultimately shut him up."
As a mother of two children, Hafina shared her conflicting feelings: "On one hand, I think the city government should allow him to dig through the landfill and try to find that fortune he has been dreaming of, which would be good for his mental health. But on the other hand, I feel he should let it go and move on."
"It seems like he blames me, although I know he doesn't really blame me. We don’t even talk now."
Hafina, image source online
James later acknowledged this: "I try not to blame her in public or in my daily life, but I know I do so subconsciously."
So they ended up getting divorced, with Hafina taking the two children and leaving the townhouse, leaving behind the children's pet dog, Ruby. The sheets on the bunk bed were wrinkled and smelled musty, the wallpaper was peeling, and the room was filled with dust.
Hafina stated that the reason for ending the relationship was not Bitcoin, but other reasons. Losing the Bitcoins themselves never troubled Hafina: "It's not a physical thing. Money has never been that important to me." "No matter how much the Bitcoin he eventually recovers is worth, I have no right to claim any. Although he is the father of my two sons, I don't want a single penny."
After that, James's life rhythm was completely disrupted. He lost motivation to work, didn't want to check Bitcoin prices for a while, and deliberately avoided the road to the landfill. He admitted, "Every day sitting in front of the console, I couldn't concentrate. The memories of that wasted money were suffocating me."
More than a decade later, his children are now busy with other things and rarely come to visit him. After Hafina, he tried other intimate relationships, but the trauma still lingers in his heart.
James occasionally imagines his parallel self living a different life: for instance, still being with Hafina, married, taking care of the family, just like the original trajectory. They were just starting out; James was 20 years old, Hafina 22, and they should have had a happy life. If he hadn't lost those Bitcoins, they might still be living on a yacht.
Ten years of selling this story day in and day out.
James also became suspicious and extreme because of this incident; he intentionally blurred the number of Bitcoins when publicly disclosing figures: at first he said it was 4,000, then 7,500, until in recent years he finally admitted the true number was 8,000, in an attempt to confuse potential 'thieves.'
When media or other partners asked him to verify more details, he always refused, fearing the information would leak to the competitors of the current excavation team, attracting 'tomb raiders.'
People who have come into contact with James often feel he is evasive and defensive. Once, a friend asked him what he thought about the still-in-development COVID-19 vaccine. He replied, "One thing I've learned from the IT world is... never try the first version." Regarding the GameStop stock squeeze in 2021, James said it was a completely manipulated game.
And more voices are saying that James has oversold his story.
The Los Angeles production company LEBUL has been authorized to bring his life to the big screen, titled (Buried Bitcoin: James's True Treasure Hunt), which is expected to be released at the end of 2025. His story will be presented with a large amount of CGI effects to depict 'high-tech treasure hunting' scenes.
"This is the tenth time he has sold his story and appeared in the newspapers," said a netizen. For him, media exposure is both self-comfort and the last resort to maintain hope. Every time during the documentary production phase, he would 'release' new developments: saying he had almost pinpointed the location of the hard drive or had launched the latest AI robotic arm screening plan. To keep onlookers engaged, he might even raise the next 'search fund.'
Recently, James proposed a radical idea: he plans to issue a token called Ceiniog Coin (INI), with a total of 800 billion coins, aiming for a launch by the end of the year. Each INI will embed data from the Bitcoin network's OP_RETURN and integrate with protocols like Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals, anchoring the value of '1 Satoshi' from the lost 8,000 BTC. He claims that holders can expect to share in any future dividends from recovering or monetizing the hard drive.
All of this sounds both imaginative and absurd.
Because of the dramatic nature of the story, many people doubt whether it is an elaborate lie from start to finish. After all, in the UK, you can sell any small story to a tabloid for £250 each, let alone such a dramatic story that can be shared day in and day out for a decade. However, the author does not think so, as I see many details in this story, and it is well known that lies generally do not contain so many details.
James's favorite movies were (Fight Club) and (The Matrix)—for a technology utopian enthusiast, these two films encapsulated his worldview.
Now, he often mentions (Final Destination): in the film, even a loose screw or a faulty pool drain can trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. He says this is exactly his situation—a seemingly insignificant hard drive has shaken his entire world.
On that summer night in 2013 when the hard drive was lost, James Howells's life became trapped in that day.
