Overview

• Howells halted all excavation attempts after a High Court judge cited environmental risks and Newport City Council moved to cap the landfill and build a solar farm.
• He plans a late-2025 initial coin offering for Ceiniog, a Bitcoin layer-2 network whose tokens represent the 8,000 BTC he claims legal ownership of.
• Despite offering more than £2.5 million to purchase the landfill, he received no response from Newport City Council, which now holds sole rights under UK waste-disposal law.
• Environmental regulations and landfill ownership rules blocked his decade-long effort to recover the hard drive containing the private key.
• Ceiniog tokens will reflect the value of the inaccessible BTC but cannot be exchanged for the actual coins since the private key remains entombed under capped waste.