The Crypto community is celebrating today as Bitcoin (BTC) surges to a new all-time high of over $118,000. Many individuals and businesses see profits skyrocketing, while others see millions of dollars in profits.
However, not everyone shares this property. Some people missed the boat by failing to invest at the right time, while others owned Bitcoin, but lost their wealth due to simple surveillance. Forgotten passwords, misplaced hard drives, and reformatted laptops have turned what could have been life-changing wealth into a multi-million-dollar disaster.
James Howells
James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, Wales, is more famously known as the man who lost 8,000 bitcoins. Howells was an early adopter of cryptocurrency, mining Bitcoin in 2009 and had little value, but only forgot about it later.
In 2013, Howells made a mistake that bothered him for over a decade. He accidentally dumped a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins while cleaning up his office.
His then-girlfriend Hartina Eddie Evans, unaware of its importance, took a hard drive to the Dockway landfill, which remains buried under more than 1.4 million tons of waste. In an interview with The Daily Mail, Eddy-Evans emphasized that Howells asked her and that she only disposed of her hard drive.
“The computer part was disposed of in a black bag along with other unnecessary belongings, so he asked me to take it away. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought he should run his errands and not me, but I wasn’t going to lose it,” she said.
After recognizing what he had lost, Howells made a lot of effort to recover his Bitcoin fortune, worth more than $945 million at its current market price.
He filed multiple appeals with Newport City Council and asked for permission to unearth the landfill, which were consistently denied due to environmental risks and logistical challenges. His request failed despite offering to donate 10% of the recovered funds to the community.
In late 2024, Howells filed a lawsuit against the council, seeking £495 million ($578 million) of compensation or the right to access landfills. However, the court dismissed Howells’ case.
In February, he even proposed to buy the landfill after the council announced plans to close it for the 2025-26 fiscal year. In May, Howells launched a fundraising campaign to raise $75 million by representing 21% of 8,000 BTC.
“Based on 21% of the wallet’s value (1,675 BTC), Howells’ newly announced landfill token (LTT) will be released as Cultural Digital Collectible at TOKEN 2049 in Singapore on October 1, 2025. We will unearth the landfill at Newport Dockway,” the announcement reads.
His story remains a saga of tenacity against bureaucratic and ecological hurdles. In fact, Lebul, a Los Angeles-based production company, has secured the right to tell the story of Howells. He develops docusaries, podcasts and short content. The series is titled “Burned Bitcoin: The Real Treasure Hunt of James Howells.”
Stephen Thomas
Stefan Thomas, former CTO of Ripple and co-creator of the Interledger Foundation, faces a different kind of lockout. In 2011, Thomas was paid 7,002 bitcoins to create an explanatory video about Bitcoin.
He stored the coins on a hard drive named Iron Key. This extremely secure device allows you to only have 10 password attempts before encrypting your content permanently.
Unfortunately, Thomas lost the paper he wrote his password. By 2021, he had already used eight attempts, so there were only two opportunities left to guess correctly or lose access forever.
“I was just lying in bed and thinking about it. And I went to the computer with some new strategies, and it didn’t work, and I’m desperate again.
Thomas’s light letter attracted global attention with his offer of support. In October 2023, Wired reported that Crypto Recovery Comphered claimed that he could defeat Thomas’ Ironkey using a private technique. However, Thomas refused their offer and stuck to an earlier agreement he had made with two other teams to retrieve Bitcoin.
Gabriel Abed
Barbadian diplomat Gabriel Abed is the founder of Abed Group, co-founder of Bitt and a pioneer of known cryptocurrencies. In particular, he founded the first blockchain company in the Caribbean in 2010.
But, as destined, Abedo suffered a huge loss in 2011. A colleague reformatted a laptop containing a private key in his wallet and lost around 800 bitcoins.
Losses at the time were relatively minor, but today, following Bitcoin’s record highs, these coins are worth over $94 million. Nonetheless, Abedo’s lost Bitcoin did not thwart his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency.
“The risk of being my own bank is the reward of being free to access my money and being a citizen of the world. It’s worth it,” Abed mentioned to the New York Times.
He has since become a leading figure in the industry. In 2013, Abedo co-founded in Barbados. The company is contributing to the Caribbean Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiative.
Thus, the stories of James Howells, Stephen Thomas and Gabriel Abedo highlight the unpredictable nature of cryptocurrency ownership. Abed’s resilience in Howells’ ongoing battles and advances reflects the diverse ways in which individuals navigate losses.
Each Lost Fortune has lessons for the growing number of crypto investors adventure through this high stakes digital frontier.
Almost Bitcoin Billionaire Post: The story of lost property in time first appeared in beincrypto.
