British engineer James Howells lost access to 8,000 BTC 13 years ago after mistakenly throwing away a hard drive containing the private keys. Now the story has been turned into a first-person treasure hunt game by a Reddit user, with players searching a 3D landfill for the missing device.
The setup is simple. Tear open one trash bag after another, step past rotten bread and flattened cardboard, scan a landfill that seems to stretch forever, and keep a flashlight pointed at one goal: find the hard drive.
The project is not a real-world simulation event but a 3D game still under development. The hard drive at the center of it, though, comes from a real case. In 2013, Howells accidentally threw away a drive that held the private keys to 8,000 BTC. At current prices cited in the report, that stash would be worth about $646 million, or roughly TWD 20 billion. The drive is still believed to be buried under a landfill in Newport, Wales.
The Reddit post took off within hours
The person building the game is Reddit user u/Paiden1, who uses the X account @7paiden. In a post on r/Bitcoin, the developer asked for help in direct terms: 「I need everyone’s help, I’m making a game where players search a landfill for the Bitcoin hard drive James Howells lost.」
The post included gameplay footage. The visuals were rough, with clear polygon edges, and showed the player bending down to sort through trash, pushing aside rotten vegetables and warped cardboard boxes. The whole scene looked like an expensive scavenger hunt built on one of Bitcoin’s best-known mishaps.
After the clip was posted to r/Bitcoin, it rose to the top of the subreddit within a few hours. The developer later wrote: 「Thank you everyone, my life has completely changed in just a few hours. I never expected this much support.」
The hard drive was discarded in 2013
According to the report, Howells threw away the old hard drive in August 2013 while cleaning up his home. The device eventually ended up at the Docksway landfill in Newport. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at around $100 per coin.
Over the following decade, Howells repeatedly sought permission from Newport City Council to excavate the site. He even offered to give 25% of the recovered value, about £55 million, to local residents if the drive was found. The council rejected those proposals, citing environmental risk and the high cost of excavation.
He also explored buying the landfill outright and taking on about £25 million to £30 million in environmental liabilities over the next 40 years. That plan also fell through.
Court bids failed, and the landfill is due to close
On Jan. 9, 2025, High Court judge Keyser KC in Cardiff formally rejected Howells’ claim, saying he had 「no realistic prospect of success」. An appeal was also rejected in March that year.
Howells then said he would stop pursuing excavation and shift to a tokenization plan called Ceiniog Coin. The report added that the landfill is expected to close this year and be redeveloped into a solar power plant. If that happens, the hard drive containing access to 8,000 BTC will most likely remain buried beneath the solar panels for good.