7 Things You Didn't Know About the Guy Who Lost His Bitcoin in the Dump
James Howells. The name alone makes Bitcoin holders wince.
8,000 Bitcoin. Sitting in a Welsh landfill. Worth over £600 million. Gone.
You’ve heard the story. Office clearout. Wrong hard drive. Bin bag. Done.
But here’s what most people don’t know about the man behind crypto’s most expensive mistake.
1. His Mum Made Microchips
Before James Howells became the poster child for lost Bitcoin, he grew up in a household where his mother worked in microchip production.
By 13, he was building computers. Not playing with them. Building them.
This wasn’t some tech-bro who stumbled into Bitcoin by accident. Howells had been deep in the hardware game since childhood. The foundations were there. The irony? All that technical knowledge couldn’t save him from a bin bag.
2. He Was Mining Bitcoin Two Months After the Whitepaper Dropped
December 2008. Satoshi publishes the Bitcoin whitepaper.
December 2008. James Howells teaches himself about Bitcoin.
February 2009. He starts mining.
Think about that timeline. Most people didn’t hear about Bitcoin until 2013. Howells was mining it when it was worth nothing. When there was no community, no exchanges, no infrastructure. Just cryptography nerds and a bloke in Newport with a Dell XPS laptop that kept overheating.
He mined 8,000 BTC over two months. Then stopped because his laptop was too hot.
If you’re keeping score: one of the earliest Bitcoin miners in history lost his entire fortune because he… did a spring clean.
3. It Wasn’t Actually Him Who Threw It Away
Here’s where it gets messy.
Hafina Eddy-Evans. His partner at the time. Mother of his three children.
She took the rubbish to the tip.
But according to Hafina, James “begged” her to do it. He asked her to take the unwanted items to the landfill. She did him a favour.
She insists it’s not her fault. James admits he “subconsciously” blames her.
Imagine that relationship dynamic. £600 million worth of blame sitting between you. No wonder they’re not together anymore.
4. The Hard Drive Only Contains 32 Kilobytes of Data
£600,000,000.
32KB.
That’s smaller than most email attachments. Smaller than a single high-res photo. Smaller than this article.
The private key to 8,000 Bitcoin fits in 32 kilobytes. That’s all it takes. The laptop it was stored on? Also had music, emails, family photos. Normal stuff.
But the bit that matters — the thing worth more than most lottery jackpots — takes up less space than a Word document.
And it’s buried under 110,000 tonnes of rubbish.
5. His First Reaction: “You’ve Got No Chance”
James realises what he’s done.
He goes to the landfill. Looks at the site.
His immediate thought? “You’ve got no chance. The area covered is huge.”
He accepted it. The coins were gone. Forever.
Then Bitcoin’s price started climbing. And climbing. And climbing.
Suddenly, “no chance” turned into “maybe there’s a chance.” Then “definitely a chance.” Then lawsuits, excavation plans, AI-powered drone proposals, and over a decade of obsession.
But that first instinct? He was probably right.
6. He Got 200 Documentary Offers
BAFTA winners. Emmy winners. Production companies from around the world.
Everyone wanted to tell James Howells’ story.
He turned them all down. For years. Because he was busy with court battles and excavation proposals.
Then in April 2025, he finally said yes. To a startup called LEBUL. A Los Angeles production company nobody’s heard of.
Why? Because they agreed to help fund his media campaign to buy the landfill outright.
The documentary’s called “The Buried Bitcoin: The Real-Life Treasure Hunt of James Howells.” Filming starts summer 2025. Release planned for October/November.
It’ll be a tech thriller. A legal battle. A cautionary tale. And possibly the world’s most expensive “what if.”
7. He’s Launching a Cryptocurrency Backed by… Lost Bitcoin
You can’t make this up.
James Howells has given up trying to dig up his Bitcoin. But he hasn’t given up on the Bitcoin itself.
Enter: Ceiniog Coin. A Bitcoin Layer 2 network “backed” by 8,000 BTC that nobody can access.
His pitch? “These coins will never move — because the private key is on a hard drive in a landfill.”
It’s a cryptocurrency backed by inaccessible cryptocurrency. Schrodinger’s asset. Simultaneously worth everything and nothing.
And honestly? It’s the most James Howells thing he could do.
The Lesson (If There Is One)
James Howells’ story isn’t just about a bin bag.
It’s about what happens when you hold £600 million and your family has no idea how to access it.
Over 3.7 million Bitcoin are lost forever. Not because people threw them in the bin (though some did). But because:
- They died without a plan
- Their family didn’t know the seed phrase
- The recovery info was stored “somewhere safe” and never found
At BTC Graveyard, we track these losses. £185 billion in Bitcoin. Gone. Most of it? Not from landfills. From death.
89% of UK Bitcoin holders have no inheritance plan. If you died tomorrow, would your family know where to look? Would they even know you own Bitcoin?
James Howells will probably never get his Bitcoin back. But you? You can fix this today.
Take the 60-second risk quiz | Read James Howells’ full story
Because the worst Bitcoin loss isn’t the one buried in a landfill.
It’s the one buried in a will that never got written.
Related Reading
- What Happens to Bitcoin When You Die? — The uncomfortable question every holder needs to answer.
- James Howells: 8,000 BTC in a Welsh Landfill — The full case study of the most famous Bitcoin loss ever.
- Lost Bitcoin Statistics — How much Bitcoin is actually gone forever?
- How to Pass Bitcoin to Your Family — Practical steps so your family doesn’t lose what you built.
- Stefan Thomas and the IronKey — Another early miner locked out of his own fortune.