A UK judge ruled against a man who was hoping to retrieve a Bitcoin-laden hard drive from a city dump. That wallet today, the owner says, is worth nearly $750 million and could be worth $1 billion next year.

Since 2013, James Howells has been hoping to recover a laptop hard drive that he says contains the private key for cryptocurrency which he says he mined in 2009. We wrote about it at the time, noting that the value of a bitcoin had just passed $1,000, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.

James Howells lost his legal battle to recover a hard drive with $770 million worth of Bitcoin after a UK judge dismissed the case.

In 2020, the U.S. government seized a staggering 69,370 Bitcoin tied to the Silk Road dark web marketplace. These coins, surrendered by the mysterious “Individual X,” are now valued at over $6.5 billion.