A judge has thrown out a man's attempt to sue a council to recover from a rubbish tip a Bitcoin hard drive that is now worth about £598m.
James Howells had argued that his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet in 2013, and he wanted to access the site and recover the cryptocurrency.
But Newport council asked a High Court judge to strike out Mr Howells' legal action to access the landfill or get £495m in compensation.
Judge Keyser KC said there were no "reasonable grounds" for bringing the claim and "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial.
Reacting to the decision, Mr Howells said he was "very upset".
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The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, but Mr Howells said he had narrowed the hard drive's location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes.
Mr Howells has speculated that, by next year, the Bitcoin on his hard drive could be worth £1bn.
Honestly. If there's a billion dollars in a landfill with your name on it, you don't sue a council. You get a job at that landfill. Fucks sake, only idiots become billionaires I swear
That seems an unambitious plan - with a billion dollars on the line, you form a team of the very best people at their job and pull off an audacious raid of the landfill. The Bristol Channel Seven.
I didn't write the whole plan out because I don't have a billion dollars hidden in a landfill. The team would need access, hence the job at the landfill.
The process would involve a pretty massive workforce and heavy machinery. He wasn't suing for the right to enter on foot and poke around for 100 years. He wanted to start a project that could actually find it, which would involve detailed work on a huge scale.