He threw away a hard drive with 8,000 bitcoins — now worth hundreds of millions

In 2009, James Howells, a computer engineer in Newport, Wales, was one of the earliest people to mine Bitcoin, using a laptop to generate coins when they were worth essentially nothing. He mined thousands of bitcoins over a couple of months, then moved on. The private keys to those coins lived on his laptop's hard drive.

In 2013, while cleaning his house, Howells accidentally threw the hard drive away — into a bag that went to the Docksway landfill in Newport. By then, Bitcoin's price had begun its long climb. The drive he had tossed held the keys to 8,000 BTC, which over the following years became worth tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars (around $750 million by early 2025).

Howells has spent years trying to get it back. He assembled a team of specialists, secured funding, and proposed an excavation — even offering to share a cut of any recovered coins with the city. But Newport City Council has repeatedly refused permission to dig, citing the environmental risks of disturbing the landfill (methane, asbestos, toxic leachate). In 2024 Howells sued the council; in January 2025 the High Court dismissed his claim. The fortune, almost certainly, is still under the rubbish.