A U.K. man hoping to retrieve a Bitcoin-laden hard drive from a city dump is offering to buy the landfill. That wallet today, the owner says, is worth nearly $770 million. James Howells, who has spent the last 12 years trying to convince officials in the UK city of Newport to let him explore the city landfill,

A man who claims his $700 million Bitcoin fortune was dumped at a landfill is trying to buy the land back in hopes of recovering it, according to a report.

A computer engineer who lost £620m-worth of Bitcoin wants to buy the tip where he believes it was buried. James Howells, from Newport, claimed his ex-girlfriend mistakenly chucked out a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.

Howells first made headlines in 2013 when he revealed to the public that he lost his ability to access the 7,500 Bitcoins he mined back in 2009 when they were basically worthless. At that point, his Bitcoin stash was worth about $7 million.

A Welsh landfill site where 8,000 Bitcoins are thought to be buried will be repurposed, at least partly, into a solar farm - but the man who lost the haul has other plans.

James Howells is considering buying the garbage dump he believes his $760million Bitcoin fortune was lost in after losing a legal battle with the local authority to be granted access to search the sit

James Howells, who is pursuing a legal battle to retrieve his $775 million Bitcoin fortune, now wants to buy the landfill site where the stash has been allegedly dumped. Howells said the option is "very much on the table,