Buried Dreams: The Tale of James Howells
James Howells sat on the edge of his couch, staring at the muted television. A news ticker scrolled across the screen: Bitcoin reaches an all-time high of $93,000 per coin. It wasn’t news to him. He didn’t need a reminder of what he had lost.
Twelve years ago, James, a young IT technician from Newport, South Wales, was an early Bitcoin enthusiast. Back then, Bitcoin was a curious experiment, something geeks traded for a few cents. James had mined 8,000 of them on an old laptop, more as a hobby than an investment. But in 2013, during a routine spring cleaning, he’d unknowingly discarded the hard drive containing his Bitcoin wallet.
At the time, the coins were worth $8 million—a painful realization but not life-altering. However, as Bitcoin’s value skyrocketed, so did the weight of his mistake. By 2025, those lost coins were worth an astronomical $742 million.
For over a decade, James pursued every avenue to recover his hard drive. He proposed innovative excavation plans using AI-driven robots, thermal imaging drones, and a team of engineers. He sought private investors, appeared on talk shows, and even petitioned the Newport City Council multiple times. But the landfill where his hard drive was buried—a sprawling site with over 15,000 tons of waste—posed significant health and environmental risks. Each request to dig was met with a resounding “no.”
James became a local legend, known as the “Bitcoin Man.” People whispered about him in pubs and debated his predicament online. Some called him a visionary undone by bad luck, while others dismissed him as a fool clinging to an impossible dream.
By 2024, the courts had delivered their final verdict: no permit, no excavation. The judge’s ruling was clear—recovering the hard drive was both an environmental and logistical impossibility. The dream was over.
Sitting in his small, modest home, James looked out at the grey Welsh sky. The bitterness was hard to shake, but there was a peculiar sense of closure in being forced to give up. “At least,” he thought, “I dared to try.”
As he sipped his tea, he glanced at a framed photo on the mantle. It was from 2010—James at his desk, the old laptop humming beside him, his toddler son perched on his lap. He smiled wistfully. The real treasure had never been buried in a landfill.
James turned off the TV and grabbed his coat. The future was uncertain, but life went on, even without $742 million. After all, some dreams are worth chasing—even if they lead you to unexpected places.
