{"id":86699,"date":"2025-08-07T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=86699"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:00:45","slug":"man-who-threw-away-1-billion-in-bitcoin-debunks-rumors-heres-the-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=86699","title":{"rendered":"Man Who Threw Away $1 Billion In Bitcoin Debunks Rumors, Here\u2019s The Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Howells, the British man who famously lost access<\/a> to 8,000 Bitcoin in a 2013 landfill accident, is setting the record straight. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Howells pushed back<\/a> against recent social media claims that he has abandoned his search. He firmly denied the rumors and revealed a new strategy to reclaim his lost fortune, now worth roughly $923 million. Although he\u2019s no longer seeking permission from his local council to search the landfill, he\u2019s far from done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Howells Debunks Rumors, Plans To Turn His Lost $1 Billion In Bitcoin Into Ceiniog Coin<\/h2>\n

In the post shared on X, Howells confirmed he has not given up and slammed years of rejection from Newport City Council.<\/a> For over a decade, he says he tried public proposals, legal talks, mediation, and even offered over $30 million to recover the drive buried in the landfill. \u201c$1 billion and they ignored it all,\u201d he wrote. With no response from the council, he has decided to stop waiting.<\/p>\n

Instead of continuing legal fights or making more offers, Howells announced a new plan: to tokenize the entire wallet of 8,000 BTC into a new cryptocurrency called Ceiniog Coin (INI). Named after an ancient Welsh coin, Ceiniog will act as a Layer 2 token built on Bitcoin, matching 1:1 with satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin. <\/a>He plans to create 800 billion INI tokens, each directly linked to the 8,000 BTC sitting on the lost drive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Howells, Ceiniog will launch in late 2025, powered by Bitcoin\u2019s OP_RETURN functionality. It will integrate with Web3 projects like Stacks, Runes, and Ordinals. With the ICO<\/a> planned later this year, Howells hopes the coin\u2019s market value will eventually match that of the lost BTC, making him a theoretical billionaire, just 8.34% away from that goal based on current prices.<\/a><\/p>\n

How He Lost The Bitcoin And What He\u2019s Done To Get It Back<\/h2>\n

The saga began in 2013, when James Howells, a British IT professional, accidentally threw out<\/a> a hard drive that contained the keys to 8,000 BTC, now worth nearly a billion dollars. Realizing the mistake too late, Howells spent the next 12 years trying to recover it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He submitted detailed recovery proposals, including environmental clean-up plans and AI-powered landfill scans. He even offered to raise $75 million by selling 21% of the Bitcoin\u2019s value to fund the excavation. His most recent formal offer in July 2025, worth between $33 million and $40 million, included a full purchase of the landfill and a cleanup strategy. Citing environmental risks <\/a>and lack of confidence in the outcome, the Newport City Council rejected the plan.<\/p>\n

Now, instead of digging through landfill waste, Howells is building Ceiniog Coin as his way of reclaiming what he believes is rightfully his. He plans to debut the coin at a discount, letting early supporters buy in before the coin reaches its full value. Over time, he hopes the token\u2019s value will naturally rise to reflect the worth of 8,000 Bitcoin<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Howells, the British man who famously lost access to 8,000 Bitcoin in a 2013 landfill accident, is setting the record straight. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Howells pushed back against recent social media claims that he has abandoned his search. He firmly denied the rumors and revealed a new strategy to reclaim his lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}