text: James Howells, an IT worker living in the United Kingdom, knows exactly where his misplaced 7,500 bitcoins are but the city council where he lives won't let him retrieve them. They say it's against the law. 
   
   According to a report published in The Telegraph, Howells began mining bitcoin on his personal laptop in 2009. In 2013, though, "after I had stopped mining, the laptop I had used was broken into parts and sold on eBay," Howells tells The Telegraph. 
   
   He kept the drive he used to collect the bitcoins, "so if bitcoin did become valuable one day, I would still have the coins I mined." 
   
   But, while cleaning his home in 2013, he mistakenly put it into a waste bin at his local landfill site in Newport, South Wales, where it got buried. 
   
   Now, with bitcoin's value hovering just above $17,000 Wednesday, according to digital-currency website CoinDesk, Howells' 7,500 lost bitcoins are worth more than $127 million. CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index tracks prices from digital currency exchanges Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Coinbase and itBit. 
   
   More than four years' worth of garbage have poured into the dump since his mistake, which would make any recovery effort a significant undertaking. "A modern landfill is a complex engineering project and digging one up brings up all sorts of environmental issues, such as dangerous gasses and potential landfill fires," Howells says. "It's a big, expensive and risky project." ||||| Newscast/UIG via Getty Images 
   
   What does it feel like to lose $75,000,000 in bitcoin? James Howells tries not to let it get to him. And strictly speaking, he knows where his coins are — they're under 200,000 tonnes of garbage at a landfill in Newport, South Wales. 
   
   Back in 2009, Howells set an old laptop to mining bitcoin – back before you needed specialised hardware – eventually totting up 7,500 coins. He later broke up the Dell M1710 into parts to sell on eBay, but kept the hard drive tucked away in a drawer in case bitcoin ever did take off. Four years later, he'd forgotten about his horde, and during a clean out, the hard drive was accidentally binned, presumably landing in Newport landfill. 
   
   Advertisement 
   
   At that time, his bitcoin stash was already worth millions. Thanks to the digital currency's value skyrocketing from between $300 and $1,000 in 2013 to more than $10,000 this week, his pile is now worth $75 million. 
   
   Why isn't he frantically digging through refuse? For that matter, why aren't you? The council won't allow it – it's dangerous and difficult. "I haven’t actually tried to search for the hard drive yet as I haven’t been given permission to look despite having financial backing in place and engaging the local council a number of times," Howells tells me via email. "Digging up a landfill is not as easy as just digging a hole in the ground." It would require diggers, plenty of specialist help, and, Howells says, be the first such excavation that wasn't related to a criminal investigation in the UK – though such an effort has been done in the US to retrieve dumped ET Atari cartridges. 
   
   Read next Another week, another bitcoin hack, another huge price drop Another week, another bitcoin hack, another huge price drop 
   
   A spokesperson for Newport City Council said it has been "contacted in the past about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to contain bitcoins". But the costs of digging up the landfill, and storing and treating the waste, would run into the millions and cause a "huge environmental impact on the surrounding area". And there's no guarantee the drive would be found or still work. 
   
   The landfill contains around 350,000 tonnes of waste, with 50,000 added annually, the spokesperson said. "It is likely that the hardware would have suffered significant galvanic corrosion due to the presence of landfill leachates and gases," they added. 
   
   Millions in costs, dangerous conditions, no promise of a reward... but what a reward if found. Newport City Council has faced budgetary concerns this year – the head of the council has warned that council tax will increase amid services cuts – and Howells believes bitcoin will eventually be worth so much they will have no choice but to let him search. "And obviously they would get a nice percentage as a gift or donation." 
   
   If this all makes you want to hop a train to Newport with a shovel in hand, be warned that aside from being dangerous, the landfill is not open to the public and "any potential treasure hunters" would be committing a criminal offence, the council spokesperson noted. And the effort required to search for the drive means you're sure to be noticed. 
   
   Advertisement 
   
   Howells still has the public address, so he can check that his coins haven't moved; if you do find the hard drive, note that the data is encrypted, so you'll need his help either way. "If they ever moved I would know," he says. "It's a little like looking at your bank account containing millions of dollars but not being able to spend it." If you doubt his good humour about the whole story, he follows that statement with a "lol". 
   
   Howells is always aware of the bitcoin price, but not because of his missing treasure. "I have multiple tickers running with prices in different fiat currencies, but that's not because I’m obsessed with the price because of my lost coins," he said. "I’m still active in the bitcoin space and still involved with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on a day-to-day basis promoting, tweeting, trading, development, research, learning." His interests now lie in Bitcoin Cash, the result of a hard fork in August, and he has plenty more to say about the post-fork discussion and the future of digital currencies than he does the lost coins. 
   
   If he had access to his digital fortune, he believes he'd have sold up some of it by now anyway, partially to invest in rival currencies. "Who knows for sure... honestly I probably would have sold 30 per cent or 40 per cent at around $1,000 in 2013 to invest in property and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and kept the rest in bitcoin," he says. "I know for sure I would not have sold them all because I believe the bitcoin price will be much higher than $10,000 long term. Even $100,000 is a conservative figure." If that ever happens, his missing bitcoin will be worth $750m – which may well be enough to get Newport Council's attention.
target: – When covering the story four years ago, Newser's headline read, "$7.5M Bitcoin Fortune Buried in Landfill." That fortune ended up in a Welsh landfill after James Howells threw out a hard drive over that summer while cleaning up his workspace. On it was the cryptographic "private key" he needed to access his 7,500 Bitcoins—which are now worth far, far more. With bitcoin valued at roughly $17,000 as of Wednesday, those 7,500 lost bitcoins are worth more than $127 million, reports CNBC. He tells the Telegraph that he hasn't "sat here crying about it, accidents happen." But that hasn't deterred him from hoping he'll one day get to go searching at the Newport landfill, something the Newport City Council currently won't allow. It would be a novel undertaking: "A landfill has never been excavated in the UK before" for non-criminal reasons, he says, "so we’re in uncharted territory with regards to regulations, local authorities and environmental agencies." And there are plenty of risks, from deadly gases to the possibility of landfill fires, not to mention the cost. But "the higher the value goes, the more chance I have to recover it," he says. Wired spoke with a rep from the city council, and the upshot isn't too optimistic, with the rep citing the huge costs of doing the excavating and storing the waste, plus the "huge environmental impact on the surrounding area"—and after all that, the hard drive might not be found or usable, though Howells has brushed off naysayers who argue the drive would be destroyed by corrosion at this point. (Read about a bitcoin crime.)