In the course of the listening to in December the court docket heard how Mr Howells had been an early adopter of Bitcoin and had efficiently mined the cryptocurrency.
As the worth of his lacking digital pockets soared, Mr Howells organised a workforce of specialists to try to find, recover and entry the onerous drive.
He had repeatedly requested permission from the council for entry to the location, and had provided it a share of the lacking Bitcoin if it was efficiently recovered.
Mr Howells efficiently “mined” the Bitcoin in 2009 for nearly nothing, and says he forgot about it altogether when he threw it out.
The worth of the cryptocurrency rose by more than 80% in 2024, and Mr Howells believes his 8,000 bitcoins to now be value greater than £600m.
However James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that current legal guidelines meant the onerous drive had turn out to be its property when it entered the landfill web site. It additionally stated that its environmental permits would forbid any try to excavate the location to seek for the onerous drive.
The supply to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local people was encouraging the council to “play quick and unfastened” by “signing up for a share of the motion,” stated Mr Goudie.
In a written judgement the decide stated: “I additionally think about that the claim would don’t have any lifelike prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no such thing as a different compelling purpose why it needs to be disposed of at trial.”
The landfill holds greater than 1.4m tonnes of waste, however Mr Howells stated he had narrowed the onerous drive’s location to an space consisting of 100,000 tonnes.
Mr Howells has speculated that, by subsequent 12 months, the Bitcoin on his onerous drive could possibly be value £1bn.
He instructed BBC Wales outdoors the court docket listening to in Cardiff final December that he believed in his case and was prepared to take all of it the best way to Supreme Court docket.
