Bitcoin unlucky guy gets film monument: When the 730 million hard drive ended up in the trash

Twelve years ago, Welshman James Howells' hard drive was accidentally thrown away. Now the spectacular treasure hunt is being turned into a documentary series.

Luke 09.06.2025

The unluckiest person of the 21st century is getting his own documentary series. It's about Welshman James Howells, who 12 years ago lost his hard drive , which contained a key to his Bitcoin fortune, now worth around €730 million.

Some people have already recognized the story's potential: Howells told the BBC that many people have already expressed interest in making a documentary about his search. He says he has received over 200 inquiries, some from well-known production companies. So far, he has always declined. But now, the drama series is coming.

Unlucky guy gets film monument from Los Angeles The hunt for 732 million euros in Bitcoin

Los Angeles-based production company LEBUL recently announced plans to release a documentary series titled The Buried Bitcoin: The Real-Life Treasure Hunt of James Howells at the end of the year.

It all began in 2009 , when Bitcoin came onto the market. Bitcoin mining was very popular among risk-taking, tech-savvy investors. In 2013, Howells owned a hard drive with a private key to a wallet containing a total of 8,000 Bitcoin. Today, these are worth approximately 618 million British pounds (732 million euros), although it should be emphasized that the Bitcoin price is subject to strong fluctuations.

Ex-partner allegedly accidentally disposed of hard drive worth millions

During a cleanup, an IT technician's ex-partner confused two hard drives, and the one containing the private key to the encrypted assets accidentally ended up in the trash. Since then, the key has been lying somewhere in a landfill in Newport, UK . Howells refused to accept his fate and launched an unprecedented search operation, including the use of robot dogs.

The search came to a temporary end in early 2025: British authorities banned Howells from continuing his search at the public dump. But at the beginning of February, the next twist came: The city of Newport wants to close the dump to build a solar farm on the site. Howells now wants to buy the site.

Courts always ruled against Bitcoin loser Howell

The Welshman told the BBC he was "excited" to "finally be able to tell the story in his own words" in the documentary series. A documentary was never possible until now due to the ongoing civil court case against his ex-partner, who allegedly discarded the hard drive.

Last month, a Supreme Court judge rejected Howell's efforts to maintain access to the landfill and claim £495 million in compensation, arguing that there were no "reasonable grounds" for bringing the action and "no realistic prospect" of success in a full trial.

This recently prompted Howells to represent himself before the Court of Appeal in London , using artificial intelligence in the search. However, in March, the court rejected his appeal, and he is now considering taking the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.

Source: www.berliner-zeitung.de/panorama/700-millionen-euro-im-muell-jahrelange-suche-nach-bitcoin-festplatte-wird-verfilmt-li.2331810

 

This guy always reminds me of Requiem For a Dream, kind of a mashup between Letto's and Burstyn's characters with regards to his delusional thinking.

 

I want him to succeed in finding his 100% now broken and irrecoverable hard drive and for us to get a video of that (not that I'm convinced by his story)

 

Man Forgets Password to $225 Million Bitcoin Fortune

 

sounds like a stunt to prove the security of whatever coin, wallet, exchange. Maybe he wants to get a deal with Netflix; they have dumb film specials about stuff like this all the time. He could go to Blackhat convention or hire the entire country of North Korea. No password is uncrackable.

 

Well, looks like his keys predated BIP39 so unless he devised his own scheme to create a key from a passphrase (which he would know how to do again) then no. To my knowledge the secp256k1 keys can't be brute forced, and even then this is assuming the guy has the address anymore.

He should've etched the key to gold plates and stashed them under a birdbath. Learning experience and all that. SFYL.

*edited to add* But yeah, either the dude's delusional-desperate or he's trying to cash in on attention. Or just wants attention, fuck knows. Agreed on that, of course.

 

Last edited: Jun 9, 2025 at 10:55 PM

Taken at face value, 732 million Euros is not exactly something most people would dismiss as collateral damage, not even a government. I imagine the I.T person is not particularly popular. If he's legit, nobody can blame him for trying everything possible to retrieve it.

 

Why wouldn't he have taken the money at an amount of x10?
People look at the chart at the end and recognize the amount of money they have missed.

It's laughable. People overestimate themselve and their behavior in high stress situations in the financial world.

This reveals that his character really is studded with an high amount of unreflectiveness.

 

Who knows why so many people these days do things that nobody else would? I certainly do not.
This aside, one thing I did learn a long time ago is that any central point of failure with something mission critical is never a good idea.

 

If he sent NSA an email offering half the proceeds in the morning, he'd probably be back in his wallet by lunch.