In brief

  • A Welshman has quit his pursuit of recovering 8,000 Bitcoin from a hard drive that was accidently thrown into a landfill in Newport, Wales in 2013.
  • James Howells attempted "everything humanly possible" to recover his buried BTC from legal battles to multi-million dollar bids but nothing worked.
  • Now, he's pivoting his plan to launch a Bitcoin layer-2 that claims to be "backed" by his lost funds.

James Howells has quit his 12-year quest to recover 8,000 Bitcoin from a hard drive that was accidentally binned and sent to a landfill in Newport, Wales. Now, he’s launching a Bitcoin L2 that claims to be “backed” by the lost funds, which he says a court recognized his legal ownership of.

His lost Bitcoin is now worth approximately $923 million, and is just 8.34% from making him a theoretical billionaire.

The network called Ceiniog will launch an initial coin offering late this year, Howells told Decrypt, intending to become a cultural hub akin to Solana. He believes that Ceiniog’s market capitalization should naturally float to $923 million, which would make it the 81st largest cryptocurrency, as it is theoretically backed by his lost Bitcoin—despite his having no access to the funds.

Over the weekend, he conceded that he has done everything he can to retrieve it, and it’s time to pivot to a new plan—launch a Bitcoin layer-2 network that’s “backed” by the lost tokens.

How did Howells lose his Bitcoin?

During an office cleanup, the Welshman’s then-girlfriend accidentally binned a hard drive containing the keys to his more than 8,000 BTC. Howells then determined that the hard drive had ended up in a local landfill in Newport, Wales.

Since then, Howells has spent a decade trying to get his local council to permit him to excavate the landfill. After that, he attempted to go through legal avenues, which he claims was a “stitch up” as a judge threw out the case citing environmental concerns. Most recently, Howells says, he offered to purchase the land for more than $3 million (£2.5 million) and was ignored by the relevant parties.

“It seems that, anyway I try, the establishment in this country is never going to allow this to happen,” Howells told Decrypt. “I've always thought, as Bitcoin goes up in value, eventually they'll come to their senses. Well, we're at [$923 million] today, and I put an offer to buy the landfill, and they still won't talk to me. So what’s the fucking point? I might as well go and speak to a brick wall.”

Howells shared three letters with Decrypt, which he claims to have sent to Newport City Council throughout July, offering £2.5 million ($3.32 million) for the landfill. He said that’s how much a contractor valued the land at. Plus, it could have relieved the council of up to £30 million, or $39.86 million, by avoiding post-closure care.

He planned to raise $75 million in October by tokenizing 21% of the buried BTC, which could cover the purchase of the land and the following excavation project. But Howells did not receive any response, and over the weekend, he decided to close the chapter on this part of his life.

“If they're not going to fucking sell it to me anyway, what's the point in doing a token with the narrative of buying the landfill?” Howells said, “I think it would be considered that I have tried everything humanly possible.”

Newport City Council did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

How he’s moving forward

Frustrated at being “stonewalled” by the Newport City Council, Howells now plans to use the 8,000 BTC to bootstrap the launch of a Bitcoin layer-2 network called Ceiniog—which was a currency during medieval Wales. He plans for the network to become a Bitcoin cultural hub full of Runes, Ordinals, and crypto applications.

The Welshman intends to launch an initial coin offering late this year, which will debut at a discounted price from his buried Bitcoin. He believes that, over time, Ceiniog’s market capitalization should naturally rise to the value of his 8,000 BTC, which would be $923 million at the time of writing—placing it as the 81st largest cryptocurrency, per CoinMarketCap, ahead of Dogwifhat.

“Back in the day, on the gold standard, gold used to be in the vault, and we used to use notes to represent the gold,” Howells explained. “Using that sort of methodology, I've got 8,000 Bitcoin in the ground, in the vault if you will. And these Ceiniog coins can be traded in a Web3 environment, which will represent the value of the [buried] Bitcoin.”

However, this isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison, as the gold standard required fiat currency to be exchanged into gold if demanded by a user. A similar system is in place with stablecoins, which often hold reserves of cash or cash equivalents that could theoretically be exchanged with the stablecoin tokens if required. 

Of course, Howells does not have access to the buried Bitcoin, meaning such an exchange will not be possible. As such, he explained, purchasing a Ceiniog Coin does not grant the holder access to the buried Bitcoin.

“MY view is this: As long as YOU (or anyone else in the world) can view the balance [and can] verify for yourself that it still contains 8,000 Bitcoin, then [the] Ceiniog coin is fully backed with its value,” he said. “If those coins ever moved, Ceiniog instantly loses its backing and value. I am guaranteeing that those coins will never move—because the private key is on a [hard drive] in a landfill.”

Howells added that most initial coin offerings are launched on “thin air,” while Ceiniog Coin is theoretically “backed” by 8,000 BTC. He plans to lead the project and will develop the initial parts of the network, although he plans to bring on community developers paid via a portion of the token supply.

While looking to launch the project from outside the UK, he hopes to bring the project back to Newport as an act of vengeance against the local council for not allowing him to recover his BTC.

“I want to launch Ceiniog coin and launch so many services and things in Newport and around South Wales that they ram it down their fucking throats, till they shit crypto to the fucking death,” Howells passionately told Decrypt. “You won't let me search for my property? Okay, fine. I'll tokenize it, create a load of money, and ram crypto down your fucking throat for the rest of your life.”

“When they're broke and poor, I will buy the landfill and build a fucking Scrooge McDuck money bin on top of the fucking thing,” he added.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.