Junk yard management expert: James Howells has almost no chance of retrieving a hard drive with $669 million worth of bitcoin

James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, accidentally discarded a hard drive worth $669 million in bitcoins. Although he is trying to enter the landfill through legal means or buy the site outright. However, a British scrap yard management expert has questioned the possible recovery, claiming that the chances of finding the lost hard drive and recovering $669 million worth of bitcoins are almost nil.
Howells, a computer engineer from Newport, South Wales, believed his ex-wife mistakenly discarded a hard drive containing a bitcoin wallet in 2013 and took legal action, trying to enter a local landfill or asking Newport City to pay 495 million pounds ($609 million).
At the December hearing, the court learned that Howells, an early user of bitcoin, had mined more than 7,500 bitcoins in 2009, when their value was low. However, the judge dismissed the case on January 9, saying that because so much time had elapsed, the case was not well-founded and "if the case went ahead, the chances of success would be almost nil". British Commercial Waste said that even if Howells managed to get onto the site, the probability of him finding the hard drive from the landfill 1.40 million tonnes of rubbish was only one in 902 million.