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Hard Drive Tossed in Landfill With Bitcoin Now Worth $8 Billion. Lawsuits Continue

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $8 billion... and James Howell wants it back. The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to laun...

It's now worth $8 billion... and James Howell wants it back.The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin." They claimed that rather than searching for a "needle in a haystack", the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a "finely tuned" plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. Howells' legal teams are "working pro bono," the article notes, "on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful..." And TechSpot points out that "There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage.

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