From Landfill to Blockchain: How a British Bitcoin Holder Turned a Lost Fortune Into a Tokenization Play

After 12 years of failed excavation attempts and a court defeat, British Bitcoin pioneer James Howells has abandoned efforts to recover 8,000 BTC from a Newport landfill—worth approximately $920 million at peak valuation. Instead, he’s pursuing a controversial new path: launching Ceiniog Coins (INI), a cryptocurrency pegged to his unrecoverable digital assets.

The Hard Drive That Started It All

Howells’ Bitcoin journey began in February 2009, when he was among the earliest miners on the network—one of only five miners at that time. Using a Dell XPS laptop, he accumulated 8,000 BTC before a lemonade spill damaged the machine in 2010. After disassembling the device, Howells stored the hard drive containing the private keys in a drawer, only to accidentally discard it between June and August 2013. The storage device ended up somewhere beneath approximately 110,000 to 200,000 tons of waste at Newport Docksway landfill, likely in an area that accumulated refuse from August to November 2013.

A Decade of Rejected Pleas and Legal Battles

As Bitcoin’s value soared, Howells submitted multiple requests to Newport City Council for permission to excavate the landfill. Each application was rejected on grounds ranging from environmental concerns and licensing violations to excavation costs potentially reaching millions of pounds. In 2021, Howells even offered to donate 25% of the recovered coins (worth £52.5 million at the time) to local residents—approximately £175 per person—but the council declined.

By 2022, Howells had partnered with venture capital backers and upgraded his recovery plan. The revised strategy involved AI robotic arms, drone surveillance, Boston Dynamics robotic dogs, and environmental teams, with a budget ballooning to £10-11 million over a 9-12 month period. On January 9, 2025, after filing a lawsuit claiming £495 million, a judge ruled against Howells, stating his case “lacked reasonable grounds” and had “no prospect of success.”

The British Bitcoin Profit Pivot: Creating Value From Loss

Facing the reality that legal remedies were exhausted, Howells announced an audacious alternative: launching INI tokens on the Bitcoin network using OP_RETURN protocol, integrated with Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals. The tokenization scheme would issue 80 billion Ceiniog Coins, with each INI theoretically backed by 1 Satoshi of the inaccessible 8,000 BTC.

Earlier plans to tokenize 21% of the holdings and raise $75 million during TOKEN 2049 Singapore had been quietly abandoned, but Howells’ latest approach signals a broader shift in strategy. Rather than seeking physical recovery, he’s leveraging blockchain technology to create a financial instrument around an asset that exists only in theory.

The Uncertain Future

Howells declared to media: “To all the gatekeepers who have blocked me for over a decade: You can close the doors! You can control the courts! But you cannot stop the blockchain!” Yet the fundamental challenge remains unresolved—the 8,000 BTC genuinely cannot be recovered. Even with creative tokenization, INI lacks genuine asset backing, making the project’s viability highly questionable. The British Bitcoin profit story may ultimately illustrate not innovation, but the desperation that emerges when fortunes become unreachable. Whether blockchain enthusiasm can overcome these practical realities remains to be seen.