ONE DRIVE. A FORTUNE.
In 2009, James Howells mined bitcoin on a laptop in Newport, Wales. What later made his old hard drive extraordinary was the wallet information it held: a record of the private key needed to spend his bitcoin. The fortune existed on a distributed network, but access depended on information stored in a small physical object.
During a clear-out in 2013, the drive was mistakenly discarded and taken to Newport's Docksway landfill. By November, Howells had realised what was missing. Contemporary reports put the inaccessible holding's value above £4 million. Landfill staff told him the drive could already lie beneath several feet of rubbish, somewhere within an area the size of a football pitch. The broad destination was known; the drive's exact position was not.
For years, Howells sought permission to search the landfill and assembled expertise and financial backing for a recovery attempt. The council opposed excavation, citing environmental and safety concerns. Finding the hardware was only part of the challenge: its information would also need to remain readable. The story exposed a practical limit of digital ownership. A record could persist on the network while its owner lacked the key needed to use it.
On 9 January 2025, the High Court dismissed Howells's claim against Newport City Council. It held that the discarded drive belonged to the council under waste-disposal law; permission to appeal was subsequently refused. The ruling concerned the hardware, not ownership of his bitcoin. BURIED FORTUNE looks back to the 2013 loss, when an ordinary piece of discarded equipment became the centre of an extraordinary problem.
Sources & the artist’s interpretation
Contemporary Sky News reporting records the mining, loss and November 2013 valuation. The High Court judgment records the 9 January 2025 dismissal; 33 Chambers confirmed the appeal refusal on 27 March 2025. Bitcoin.org explains the role of private keys. Howells's factual account was assumed for the application, not proved at trial. Early reports said 7,500 BTC; the later claim said 8,000. Neither amount is independently established here. The man, fence sign, handwritten label, cup, cutaway and drive scale are illustrative. ONE DRIVE. A FORTUNE. is approved editorial copy, not a historical quotation.
