Twelve years after accidentally throwing a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins (BTC), James Havals are leaving their long -running efforts to dig from a newuport landfill. Instead, he is planning to launch a new token inspired by lost coins.
Havals, whose search included a legal battle, drone survey and 25 million British pounds ($ 33.3 million) to buy landfills outright, stated that he was focusing on physical recovery on a blockchain-supported project.
Instead of trying to dig up the Stash, he aims to convert the story of lost bitcoin into a debut token – symbolically “vaulting” that cannot be accessed anymore.
Lost Hard Drive which launched 12 -year Treasure Hunt
In 2013, Howels accidentally threw the drive while teasing his office at Newport, South Wales. He mined 8,000 BTC when each coin was worth less than $ 1. Today, Lost Stash costs around $ 905 million, and their story has become a caution story for anyone that self-cocodes its crypto.
Over the years, Havals have proposed a series of solutions, proposed to buy a lump sum to Newport Landfill from the finance of excavation with private capital.
In March 2025, the UK Court of Appeal dismissed Havals’s bid for a permit to excavate landfills, ruling with Judge Christopher Nougie, there was no “real possibility of success” in the case.
In Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, Havals floated an ordinals-based tokens, representing 21% of the value of the wallet to fund a potential excavation, in which the token heals make one cut if recovery is successful. He IdeaEven after the city remained silent, shelter was given.
“He had a chance to join and interact with me on a 10 -year -old terms,” Hells told Cointelegraph. “What else do you want to do me? Will I pick up an army and march on the king myself?”
With the shutdown of the excavation door, Howels says he is giving up on completing the excavation, but not on bitcoin.
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‘The Ultimate Walt’
With the shutdown of the excavation door, Havals are once again pivying. Instead of recovering 8,000 BTCs buried in a landfill, Havals told the cointolagraph that it was planning to launch a DEFI -centric layer -2 network built on bitcoin.
The tokens will not be supported by spending bitcoin, but by the idea of lost coins, the lost hard drive will be made a symbolic vault. “We will not need to reach 8,000 bitcoin wallets because the new token is represented by it – this is all,” he said. “The landfill becomes a vault that no one can open, but everyone can see.”
However, not everyone shares this scene. Circuit founder and CEO Harry Donley told the Cointelagraph that there is a “very little chance” for recovery of money.
He said, “You are likely to reduce the very probability of reducing bitcoins that the tokens will be recognized as a valid claim, and then from the high value of the bitcoin. It leaves some residual value, but it’s not what it will trade. It will trade on the story.” “It is better as a memecoin than a real investment.”
Nevertheless, the ongoing saga of Havals is not lost in the entertainment industry. In April, he Put signature on A deal with Los Angeles-based production company Labul, providing exclusive rights to customize its story in a documentary, podcast and social-first content.
The project is aimed at bringing one of the most notorious lost-fion stories of Crypto on screen with the title “The Barid bitcoin”-the hard drive will be lost forever.
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