James Howells pivots from landfill dig to tokenization in lost Bitcoin saga

After failing to retrieve a hard drive with 8,000 BTC, James Howells is turning the lost coins into the basis of a new DeFi project.

Twelve years after accidentally throwing away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin (BTC), James Howells is abandoning his long-running effort to excavate it from a Newport landfill. Instead, he plans to launch a new token inspired by the lost coins.

Howells, whose quest included legal battles, drone surveys and a 25-million British pound offer ($33.3 million) to buy the landfill outright, told Cointelegraph he’s shifting focus from physical recovery to a blockchain-backed project.

Rather than trying to dig up the stash, he aims to turn the story of the lost Bitcoin into a DeFi token — symbolically “vaulting” what can no longer be accessed.

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