Man who accidentally threw away £150m in bitcoin ‘secures funding’ for plan to dig up landfill

James Howells says he has assembled a team of experts specialising in landfill mining, waste management and AI-powered sorting

James Howells, a Welshman who claims he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin worth about £150m ($184m) in 2013 has reportedly secured funding to dig up a Newport landfill to find the lost drive.

“The funding has been secured. We’ve brought on an AI specialist. Their technology can easily be retrained to search for a hard drive,” Mr Howells told BBC News.

The 37-year-old IT worker claims he began mining bitcoin in 2009 when they were first created, and acquired thousands of them when bitcoin was valued at around $130.