A British judge has ruled against a man who wants to excavate a landfill where he says a hard drive with access to thousands of bitcoins was mistakenly dumped more than 11 years ago.

Since 2013, James Howells has been hoping to recover a laptop hard drive that he says contains the private key for the cryptocurrency he says he mined in 2009. Ars wrote about it at the time, mark that the value of one bitcoin recently passed $1,000, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.

The alleged number of bitcoins has changed slightly, with Howells now saying he lost 8,000 bitcoins. The price of bitcoin exceeded $100,000 last month and was worth more than $95,636 last Friday, or $765 million for 8,000 bitcoins.

High Court Judge Keyser KC issued his Controls last week, sided with the accused in Howells v. Newport City Council. Howells had no realistic chance of succeeding at trial, the judge ruled. Howells is seeking “an order that the defendant deliver the hard drive or allow his team of experts to excavate the landfill to find it, and (in the alternative) compensation equal to the amount of Bitcoin he will no longer have.” access.”

The Landfill Authority owns the Garbage

The council said the excavation of the landfill site would allow harmful substances to seep into the environment, endangering residents with “potentially serious risks that raise public health issues and environmental concerns, ” the judge said.

The judge found no “reasonable grounds for bringing this case,” saying it had “no realistic prospect of success if it went to trial and that there was no other compelling reason why it should be rejected at trial.” He granted summary judgment for the defendant, dismissing the claim.

The judgment cited the Control of Pollution Act 1974, which states that “anything given to the authority by another person in the course of using the facilities belongs to the authority and can be dealt with accordingly.” “Howells submitted that section 14 (6) (c) merely states that anything given must belong to the authority but does not say that it ceases to belong to its previous owner,” the judgment said. – said. The judge disagreed, writing that “the words ‘have the authority’ are unqualified and unqualified.”

The judge found no reason to determine that the defendant’s possession of the hard drive was “unconscionable” under the law. “In my view there is no realistic prospect of a finding that the defendant’s retention of the Hard Drive was unreasonable. The defendant did not keep it for profit or because it wanted it. It kept it because it was buried in the landfill, ” the judge said.

Statute of Limitations

The claim is also barred by the six-year statute of limitations because Howells “became aware of the facts material to his claim in November 2013 but did not commence proceedings until May 2024,” the ruling said. saying.

The judge did not have to rule on whether the hard drive actually had access to the bitcoin, saying that “the only relevant issues in this case concern ownership of, and access rights to, the Hard drive.” Howells requested access to the landfill site in Newport, Wales, beginning in November 2013 but local officials refused. He says the hard drive is 2½ inches in size and contains a wallet.dat file with a private key that enables access to bitcoin.

The city council said the excavation would breach the terms of its NRW (Natural Resources Body for Wales) licence, pose risks to the health and safety of staff, risk damage from ground movement during or after of excavation, and would prevent the council from “discharging (ing). ) its statutory waste disposal functions while the site is being excavated.”