UK man sues council for failing to recover hard drive containing 8,000 BTC found in landfill

Odaily News James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, is suing Newport Council for £495 million (about $647 million) in damages after accidentally discarding a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins. Howells made several attempts to retrieve the hard drive from the local landfill, but was thwarted by the council, which repeatedly rejected his requests to dig up the site. He accidentally threw away the hard drive containing the bitcoins during a household cleanup in 2013, and the bitcoins are now worth nearly £500 million.