Man who threw away hard drive with Bitcoins worth half a billion dollars sues local city council

A man who accidentally threw away a hard drive with Bitcoins worth half a billion dollars is suing his local city council.

James Howells from Wales was left devastated when he accidentally threw the hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins worth half a billion dollars in landfill.

He is taking legal action against the local city council for not excavating the site. In a last ditch effort, the software engineer is pursing Newport City Council for roughly $647million in damages, Wales Online reported.

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It comes after the council repeatedly denied his request to excavate the landfill site housing the discarded hard drive, which contains around 8,000 units of Bitcoin, writes the paper.

The compensation that Howells sought was the peak valuation of the stash from earlier this year when the leading cryptocurrency spiked to a new all-time high.

James Howells, 38, made the costly error ten years ago when his partner mistakenly threw out a black bin bag. The bag held a hard drive which was the only way to access his stash of cryptocurrency. He has been trying to retrieve the disc from the council-run rubbish tip ever since - and has now taken legal steps to gain permission to search the dump.

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He told MailOnline : "Some experts believe that by the end of the year the price will rise to $25,000 per coin. That would make my hard drive worth £1.5 billion. The council may be happy to leave that in a landfill but I'm not. They want me to go away and forget about it but how could anyone? Why should I back down? All I want is a chance to get my property back..

Meanwhile Ex-president Donald Trump has revealed the launch date for his family's cryptocurrency project , World Liberty Financial, will be on September 16.

It will be a true family affair with all his kids involved. World Liberty Finance is helmed by Trump’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, and the 18-year-old Barron Trump is the project's "DeFi visionary."

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