The 7,500 Bitcoin Buried in a Landfill: The James Howells Story

7,500 Bitcoin, a Landfill, and the World's Most Expensive Piece of Trash

Roughly 7,500 bitcoin — worth more than $500 million at bitcoin's price highs — still sits unspent on the blockchain, and the man who owns it almost certainly cannot reach it. It was not stolen by a hacker or lost in an exchange collapse. James Howells, an IT engineer in Newport, Wales, threw the private keys in the bin himself during a clear-out in 2013, and the drive ended up in the city's Docksway landfill. More than a decade later, it has never come back out.

How a hard drive holding 7,500 bitcoin ended up in the bin

In 2009, when the Bitcoin network was new, Howells joined its early mining on an ordinary laptop. Home mining was easy then, and over time he built up roughly 7,500 bitcoin, with the private keys needed to spend them stored on a single hard drive.

In 2013, while clearing out office clutter, he mistook that drive for an unwanted one and threw it into his household rubbish. By the time he realised, days later, the waste had already been collected. The bitcoin never moved — it still sits at the same address on the blockchain; what vanished was the only key capable of moving it.

Where the drive is buried — and why a metal detector cannot help

The rubbish went to Newport's Docksway landfill. On Howells's own assessment, the drive lies somewhere in an area about the size of a football pitch, beneath several metres of compacted waste mixed with years of household rubbish.

A metal detector sounds obvious but leads nowhere: the drive is a tiny target amid huge amounts of metal in household waste, so no detector can single it out. Even if searchers narrowed the area, the drive may already have been crushed or corroded during compaction, leaving whether its data could ever be read an open question.

The £5–7 million plan to dig it back up

After bitcoin surged in 2017, Howells went public to campaign for permission to excavate. In 2021 he proposed a fully funded dig: backers such as hedge funds would put up roughly £5 million to £7 million at no cost to the public purse, and Newport City Council would receive about a quarter of anything recovered.

Why the council keeps saying no

The council refused repeatedly, on three grounds: excavating a landfill requires permits that would not be granted; a large dig carries serious environmental risk to the surrounding area and the site's normal operation; and finding one small drive beneath several metres of mixed waste is extremely unlikely. In the council's view, it was being asked to accept a definite environmental cost in exchange for a lottery ticket.

As of today, the drive has not been recovered. The roughly 7,500 bitcoin remains at the address it has always occupied — the balance is public on the blockchain — while the keys that control it remain underground.

The lesson: never let one backup become a single point of failure

The cruel twist is that nobody hacked or scammed him. The entire loss came down to one flaw: the only backup of the keys to a vast crypto fortune lived on a single drive that could be mistaken for junk.

The everyday version is straightforward. Write down your seed phrase — the human-readable form of a private key — and keep copies in more than one place, such as a fire- and water-resistant metal backup, a safe, or a trusted family member. For larger long-term holdings, consider a hardware wallet that keeps the key offline, and never bin an old laptop or drive without checking it again for wallets or keys. This guide to backing up seed phrases and private keys walks through the details. The old adage fits: not your keys, not your coins — and a key with only one backup is barely a backup at all.

FAQ

Has the hard drive ever been found?

No. As of today, Newport City Council has not approved an excavation, and Howells's drive remains buried at the Docksway landfill site.

How much bitcoin was lost, and what was it worth?

Roughly 7,500 bitcoin. At bitcoin's higher prices, the holdings were worth more than $500 million at one point; their monetary value moves with the market.

Why would the authorities stop him from digging?

The council cited missing excavation permits, the environmental risk of a large dig at a working landfill, and the very low odds of finding one small drive among years of mixed waste.

How can ordinary people avoid the same mistake?

Keep at least two geographically separated backups of your seed phrase and keys, consider a hardware wallet for larger holdings, and never discard an old computer or drive without confirming it holds no wallet or key.

Risk warning

This is a true historical story, not investment advice. Crypto prices are highly volatile, and once private keys are lost there is effectively no remedy — no support desk can reverse an on-chain balance.

Risk notice: Holding cryptocurrency carries the risk of losing private keys or seed phrases, which can make assets permanently unrecoverable. This article describes a historical event, figures fluctuate with the market, and nothing here is investment advice. Developments are based on public information from James Howells and Newport City Council, current as of October 2026.