James Howells pivots from landfill dig to tokenization in lost Bitcoin saga

Cointelegraph

Twelve years after accidentally throwing away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin , James Howells is abandoning his long-running effort to excavate it from a Newport landfill. Instead, he plans to launch a new token inspired by the lost coins.Howells, whose quest included legal battles, drone surveys and a 25-million British pound offer ($33.3 million) to buy the landfill outright, told Cointelegraph he’s shifting focus from physical recovery to a blockchain-backed project. Rather than trying to dig up the stash, he aims to turn the story of the lost Bitcoin into a DeFi token — symbolically “vaulting” what can no longer be accessed.The lost hard drive that launched a 12-year treasure huntIn 2013, Howells mistakenly tossed the drive while tidying his office in Newport, South Wales. He had mined the 8,000 BTC when each coin was worth less than $1. Today, the lost stash is worth about $905 million, and his story has become a cautionary tale for anyone who self-custodies their crypto.Over the years, Howells has proposed a range of solutions, from funding an excavation with private capital to proposing to buy the Newport landfill outright.In March 2025, the UK Court of Appeal rejected Howells’ bid for a permit to excavate the landfill, with Judge Christopher Nugee ruling there was “no real prospect of success” in the case.At Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, Howells floated an Ordinals-based token representing 21% of the wallet’s value to fund a potential dig, with tokenholders earning a cut if recovery succeeded. That idea, too, was shelved after the city remained silent.“They had the chance to engage and negotiate with me on favorable terms for 10 years,” Howells told Cointelegraph. “What else do you want me to try? Shall I raise an army and march on the King himself?”With the door to excavation closed, Howells says he’s giving up on completing the dig, but not on the Bitcoin. ‘The ultimate vault’With the door to excavation closed, Howells is pivoting once again. Rather than recover the 8,000 BTC buried in a landfill, Howells told Cointelegraph he plans to launch a DeFi-focused layer-2 network built on Bitcoin. The token will not be backed by spendable Bitcoin, but by the idea of the lost coins, making the lost hard drive a symbolic vault. “We won’t need to access the 8,000 Bitcoin wallet because the new token is a representation of it — that’s the whole point,” he said. “The landfill becomes a vault no one can open, but everyone can see.” However, not everyone shares this view. Harry Donnelly, founder and CEO of Circuit, told Cointelegraph that there's a “very low chance” of recovering the funds. "You’d have to multiply the very low chance of recovering the Bitcoin by the low chance the token would be recognized as a valid claim, and then by the high value of the Bitcoin. That leaves some residual value, but that’s not what it will trade on. It will trade on narrative," he said. "It’s better viewed as a memecoin than a real investment."Still, Howells’ ongoing saga hasn’t been lost on the entertainment industry. In April, he signed a deal with Los Angeles–based production company Lebul, granting exclusive rights to adapt his story into a docuseries, podcast, and social-first content. The project, titled “The Buried Bitcoin,” aims to bring one of crypto’s most infamous lost-fortune tales to the screen — even if the hard drive is lost forever.Hall of Flame: NBA star Tristan Thompson misses $32B in Bitcoin by taking $82M contract in cash