James Howells, a man who says he lost a hard drive with the seed phrase to retrieve 8,000 BTC (worth around $647 million at the time of writing), is suing Newport City Council in the UK.

Howells accidentally lost a hard drive (unclear how, he's given different versions of the story) with 8,000 BTC in it back when Bitcoin was worth peanuts.

Unsurprisingly, he's not too happy about it, and he's since come up with about a million different plans to recover the hard drive.

The short, summarised version of his story is, he thinks he knows where the hard drive is, and he's asking for permission to excavate the site to retrieve it, but Newport City Council has been repeatedly saying 'no dice'.

So now he's suing.

This is such a weird story, but not an uncommon one.

The truth is, everything about it is simply too hazy.

Slim chance his hard drive is actually where he thinks it is, slim chance it is still in one piece, slim chance it still works.

I feel bad for the guy. But realistically, that BTC is gone. And I can't really blame the council for telling him to get over it.