Buried deep in a Welsh landfill, beneath layers of years-old garbage, there is a hard drive that holds the key to almost $800 million in bitcoin – or so James Howells believes, after accidentally throwing the drive away in 2013.

James Howells has begged officials to let him dig through a South Wales landfill to find a lost Bitcoin wallet that he says is worth around $800 million.

In 2022, Howells said if he can’t go into the dump, he’ll send Boston Dynamics robotic dogs to do the digging for him. That was part of a larger, $11 million business plan in which he proposed spending three years excavating the landfill to find his hard drive, while also turning the site into a mining facility. Newport did not go for that, either.

A landfill site where a man lost a hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet now worth about £620m is set to close. James Howells, from Newport, claimed his former partner had mistakenly thrown out the hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.

Twelve years after throwing away his hard drive that contained 8,000 Bitcoin, James Howells is looking to buy the dump he believes it's in.

A computer engineer who believes his Bitcoin hard drive worth nearly £600m is buried in a landfill is now considering buying the entire site to find it. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

A Welsh landfill site where 8,000 Bitcoins are thought to be buried will be repurposed, at least partly, into a solar farm - but the man who lost the haul has other plans.

He tried to sue the local council for not responding to his requests to search the site, but the case was dismissed by a judge in January.