James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport who accidentally discarded a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins, is suing Newport City Council for 495 million pounds (about $647 million) in damages. Howells made several attempts to retrieve the hard drive from the local landfill, but was thwarted by the city council, which repeatedly denied his request to excavate the site. In 2013, he mistakenly threw away a hard drive containing bitcoin during a home cleanup, which is now worth nearly 500 million pounds.