James Howells, a computer engineer who lives in the city of Newport, Wales, has been claiming for years that in 2013 he threw away a hard drive with around 8,000 bitcoinswhich he had managed to mine at home shortly after the cryptocurrency came to light in 2009. At that time, before the latest price increases, this man already had a small fortune resting in a municipal landfill, but in the Currently its cryptocurrencies, if they exist, are worth more than 400 million euros.
The problem is that the task of recovering the desired storage unit has become an impossible mission. Howells has attempted to obtain permission from local authorities to access the garbage dump area where his cryptocurrencies are supposedly located, but all attempts have been in vain. Now, says WalesOnlineHowells has decided to sue Newport City Council as a “last resort” to recover his thousands of bitcoins, although he would not be sure about launching a legal battle.
A lawsuit for more than 500 million euros
Lawyers working for the Briton have outlined a lawsuit seeking payment of £495,314,800 (about 594 million euros) for damages. This impressive sum of money results from the calculation of the maximum valuation that bitcoins reached this year. The judicial actions have already begun their course, and it is expected that the case will be addressed by justice as soon as December, which could help bring closure to this story that has been developing for years without apparent progress.
The man told the aforementioned media that, despite the lawsuit and its rejection, he maintains his promise to assign 10% of the recovered bitcoins to the city council. “That would be 41 million pounds sterling (about 49 million euros) at the current rate, but in the future it could be hundreds of millions,” he said. Along these lines, he assured that if they had listened to him in 2013, Newport would look like to cities like Las Vegas or Dubai. From the city council, on the other hand, they have always rejected Howells’ requests.
One of the arguments they have given is that removing trash from the landfill could cause environmental damage. Is that finding the hard drive in thousands of tons of garbage It can be like finding ‘a needle in a haystack’. It certainly does not seem like an easy task. Over the years, various estimates have been given of the time it would take to find the storage unit for bitcoins, and the most generous forecasts do not go below 18 months, although years have also been talked about.
Although the lawsuit continues, Howells points out that its true objective is to “pressure” the city council to finally authorize work on the site. The plaintiff claims to have a plan to obtain the £10 million (€12 million) needed to develop the excavations, which would translate into zero expenses for the city. We will have to wait to find out how this story will evolve. For now we know that the price of bitcoin has changed, a lot, during all this time.
Images | Antoine GIRET | Amjith S | Erling Løken Andersen
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