Lost Bitcoin in Newport Landfill: Could AI Technology Save a $768 Million Fortune?

• The Newport landfill, at the center of a Bitcoin recovery case, is expected to close by 2025-26, leaving little time to retrieve the 8,000 Bitcoins.
• Local authorities plan to cap the landfill and build a solar farm, while blocking excavation due to high costs and environmental risks.
• James Howells claims 8k Bitcoins are buried at the site, as experts warn quantum computing may one day disrupt Bitcoin’s market.

The landfill in Newport, Wales which has been involved in a legal case related to a lost Bitcoin is expected to shut down sometime in the next three years at most. The site was launched before 2000 and it is anticipated to close by the year 2025-26 and therefore little time is left to try to retrieve the 8,000 buried Bitcoins.

James Howells’ Bitcoin Case

According to a recent report, Newport landfill is set to be capped and shut down by the year 2025-26. A representative of the Newport council stated that the site is in the process of reaching its lifespan and there are ways on how it will be phased out. Further the council also intends to establish a solar farm on part of the land after it approved the project in August.

The crux of the matter involves James Howells, an IT specialist who insists that the landfill contains an old hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins worth $768 million. According to Howells, the drive that he mined in 2009 was discarded mistakenly by his partner in 2013. Since then, he has waged a long legal campaign to be allowed to look for the missing hard drive in the landfill.

Newport council again turned him down after which Howells sued them in order to be allowed to excavate the site with the intention of retrieving the drive. He said he will give portion of Bitcoin if the hard drive is recovered. The legal process has been going on for nearly ten years, but the judge released the case in January and said that Howells did not have any chance of winning the lawsuit in thi

Bitcoin Losses and Impact

The council which has previously dismissed Howells’ attempt at excavation states that the process would be too expensive and would cause massive environmental impacts. They said that in October, they have stated that excavation was impossible under the environmental permit because it would harm the area surrounding the site.

However, according to Howells, with the development of AI technology, it should be possible to look for the hard drive with virtually no expense. Yet the council does not budge and thus Howells seems to have no other options left.

The lost Bitcoins are just a tip of the iceberg as to what transpires in the world of virtual currency. While the renown Web3 executive Al Leong was quoted estimating that about 3 million Bitcoin could be missing, which is up to 13 percent of the total supply.