Judge halts bid to retrieve £600m bitcoin wallet from Welsh Landfill | Bitcoin

A computer expert’s decades-long battle to recover a £600m bitcoin fortune he says was lost in landfill has been halted by a judge.

James Howells, 39, launched legal action to force Newport City Council to allow him to search the website to retrieve a lost hard drive containing bitcoins.

The council sought to dismiss the claim and a judge has upheld it. Sitting as Supreme Court judge, Justice Keyser KC said Thursday that Howells’ claim had “no realistic prospect of success” if he allowed the case to proceed to court.

He said: “I consider that the particulars of the claim do not show any reasonable grounds for bringing this action. I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of success if it were pursued and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial.”

The judge said he accepted the council’s argument that it owned the hard drive and Howells was not entitled to try to retrieve it.

He said: “In my judgment the defendant’s (council’s) argument is correct and provides a complete answer to the claim.”

Howells appeared at Cardiff Civil Justice Center in December, where he was represented by lawyers working pro bono.

He said that in the summer of 2013, he accidentally put the hard drive with his bitcoin wallet in a black bag during an office investigation and left it in the hall of his house. His partner at the time is said to have mistaken the bag for rubbish and taken it on a trip to the landfill, where it has since disappeared.

Howells quickly realized the mistake and has since asked the council to help him retrieve the hard drive, even offering to split the money with the authority, to no avail.

Dean Armstrong KC, representing Howells, said the search was not for “a needle in a haystack” but a “precise excavation” of a small area that had been identified and would be targeted by expert excavators.

James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill. He said its environmental permits would prohibit any attempt to excavate the site for such a search.

Howells has speculated that the bitcoins on his hard drive could be worth £1bn by next year. and has previously promised to take his case to the Supreme Court.